


Make the Season Bright

by Lauren_StDavid



Series: Beechwood [7]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, M/M, Monkees in drag as usual, Period Typical Attitudes, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:01:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 58,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28226574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauren_StDavid/pseuds/Lauren_StDavid
Summary: It’s the Twelve Days of Christmas, Monkees style! When the countdown to Christmas Day 1966 begins, the group looks back at some of the festive season fun and frolics they’ve shared in their short but incident-packed time together so far…Huge thanks to the Sunshine Factory website https://monkees.coolcherrycream.com/ for all the fantastic info and pictures! I couldn't have written any of these fics without that lovely treasure trove to mine.And many thanks to 70mtt for all her help and encouragement! This is all her doing!For everyone who wanted another Christmas fic. This won't be as long as the other one and there's no story, just silliness. And smut.
Relationships: Mike Nesmith/Peter Tork
Series: Beechwood [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1206016
Comments: 185
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter One

Mike gave a little grunt that was half-inquiry and half-greeting in the same breath when the edge of the bed depressed in the way that meant a person had sat on it. His eyelashes fluttered, him trying to open his eyes, but when his nose twitched, registering the scent of the other person, his lips turned up in a smile. He left his eyes closed to better catalog, both the notes detectable and those not so present.

There was no fresh salt sting of the ocean, nor any wet or dry sand of the beach—mid-December mornings made even those with a bug on surfing think twice about smashing the waves first thing. But there was the slight citrus and sandalwood that always clung, the ghosts of soap, cologne, and incense. Mike inhaled deep for the familiar _home_ , _Peter, MichaelandPeter_ apricot he loved, and got, too, a blast of the ginger, lemongrass, and peppermint leaf tea Peter drank for energy on cold mornings. _No, not ginger_ , his waking-up mind told him. Gin-something else similar.

Peter’s chuckle said he knew Mike was awake, and when Peter’s lips brushed his a second later, Mike tasted the honey Peter sweetened his tea with. Now Mike’s exhalation was a long “Umm,” of appreciation, and he licked his lips. He still didn’t open his eyes, though, enjoying the tangle of Peter’s eyelashes with his and the silk of Peter’s bangs caressing his forehead. The mattress depressed, Peter shifting to find a better angle, maybe, then was back, and a strange press of something soft and furry along Mike’s forehead, and a small tickle down the side of Mike’s face and neck had his eyes pinging open—

—to see Peter wearing a long, pointed floppy hat, bright red with a white fur trim and white pompom on the end, dangling near one ear. Mike pointed at the sight, and any grunt or sigh he’d given earlier at Peter’s nearness and closeness was now a definite groan. “Already?” he rasped. “Started?”

Pouncing, verbally, with a, “Good morning, Michael!” Peter nodded, making the white fluffy ball on the end of his hat bounce. Mike was just glad it didn’t jingle. “It’s the fourteenth,” Peter added, unnecessarily.

As if Mike didn’t know their countdown to Christmas. First a rule, it was routine, by now, in the three years they’d been here at the pad. “Could hardly not, with that nutjob downstairs starting a countdown to the countdown soon as December rolled around,” he groused.

“Hmm. How d’you put up with having shared a room with him for the past two Decembers?” Peter wondered.

“’S’why God invented drink.” Mike tried to sit up. “And coffee, for mornings.”

Peter’s hum was a little more disapproving now. “Well, no coffee this morning, but…” He held out Mike’s mug.

“No— Oh. Yeah.” Right. He’d said he wanted to be healthier, and hadn’t picked up a tin of coffee in the grocery shop this week when theirs ran out. It was mostly he who drank it, so an easy way to cut down on expenses, something he was having to do with them not working as much. But Jesus and all the saints, he sure missed that life-giving, headache-reducing, mood-elevating java. All the liquorish and mint and orange leaves and lemon peel in the world would never be the same as a thick, dark blast of roast caffeine. He just hoped he kept his opinions from showing on his face. Mike tried to make his hands reach for the cup and failed, letting Peter know with a shrug and twitch.

“Extra honey in yours,” Peter coaxed, holding the mug higher. “Oh, you want me to bring it right to your mouth?”

“Yeah, and not in the cup.” Peter would figure it out.

He did, muttering something about this wasn’t what mouth to mouth was, strictly speaking, as he took a gulp of the herbal drink and brought his face close to Mike’s. Curling a hand around Mike’s nape positioned him for Peter to seal his lips over Mike’s and feed him the drink that way. That very enjoyable way, and with Peter sweeter than any honey, as Mike often told Peter.

“He’s from New England—ya gotta tell him he’s sweeter than any maple syrup, so he gets it!” Micky had said once, catching Mike’s words.

“Think Mike’s the one who gets it. And nightly.” Davy had eyed them. “Oh, and daily, too.”

“Daily Nightly…” Mike had repeated. “Daily Nightly… That sounds—”

But Micky had interrupted again, with a barb about aww, was poor Davy envious that Mike didn’t have to leave the pad, he had it all to hand, and Davy had riffed back that _all to hand_ was a great description of Micky’s sex life, and Mike’s possible musing about a song or lyrics or even a title was lost in the usual mayhem of life in the pad.

Peter licking his lips as he looked down at Mike recalled him to the here and now. And how. Mike knew he himself was a good kisser—people gasped when he pulled away after laying one on them, and clung to him, their knees threatening to give out. But Mike loved Peter’s kisses, those caresses, whether pecks or smooches, that were as natural and free as Peter himself…and as potent and beguiling. From quick, soft presses of lips to almost shy forays of tongue to deep sweeps, searching and claiming, Mike loved them all. Love being surrounded by him.

“More?” Peter asked.

“Always, babe,” Mike assured him, his voice husky for different reasons now. He reached out to run his hand up Peter’s side, the thin orange sweater he was wearing no barrier to Mike’s fingers that needed to know the warmth of Peter’s chest or his palm that had to feel the beat of Peter’s heart under it.

Peter colored a little and Mike delighted that he could still make his darlin’ blush after all the debauched—some would say depraved—acts he’d introduced Peter to and that neither of them could get enough of. Peter ducked his head, but to take another mouthful of the tea and administer more aid and kisses. Mike took over, cupping Peter’s nape—and knocking that dumb hat off.

“Finish your drink first,” Peter eased his mouth free to say. “It’s got antioxidants.”

“Whatever they are,” Mike grumbled, settling his back properly against the headboard to take the mug for himself. “Wait—first? What’s…second?”

Even the mug held at his mouth didn’t hide Peter’s sly, wicked smile. “Well, you know how we all do special things for one another during the twelve days of Christmas? _Our_ twelve days, that is?”

True, theirs started on December fourteenth and finished on the twenty-fifth. They’d all usually gone their separate ways by then, anyway. “Yeah?”

Peter’s jerk of his chin reminded Mike that drinking up his healthy herbal hell had been mandated, so Mike chugged it back, trying to get his taste buds or his imagination to replace it with bitter, smoky dark brew. It didn’t work. Peter took his near-empty cup from him and motioned him to settle back.

“Oh yeah,” came from Mike on a long sigh the second Peter moved to get into position and pull the blanket back. “Not so fast there, shotgun. Ain’t you forgetting a rule?”

“I am?” Peter’s face looked even more adorable when confused.

“Uh-huh. The rule about giving head in the bedroom? The correct attire to be worn?”

Peter’s smile was even more gorgeous. ‘“Head is to be given naked whenever possible,”’ he muttered, skimming off his sweater and sliding down his shorts, all he was wearing. “Right…”

He leaned in and kissed Mike, humming low in his chest, in satisfaction, Mike thought. Then it was his turn to make a noise when Peter started to work his way down his torso, his progress slow because he stopped to lick and blow on the wet patches he left, and to suck, then nip at the spots he sensitized. He pulled back a little, grinning up at Mike, making him realize the sounds he was making must have turned hungry.

They turned hungrier still, bordering on desperate, when Peter arrived low enough to bite the soft skin of Mike’s hip, then his upper thigh…then his inner thigh. This nip stung, and left arousal in its wake when Peter soothed the small pain away with his tongue. Murmuring something that sounded suspiciously like, “On the first countdown day of Christmas,” Peter spread Mike’s legs with his hands and settled between them.

Oh, God, the feel of Peter nosing at his balls! Mike bit back a cry, finding an outlet instead in spearing his fingers into Peter’s silky hair. He didn’t pull or twist—he wanted to match the pace and mood Peter was setting. This was Peter’s— Mike had to drop one hand from Peter’s head and instead fisted the sheet at the side of him, crumpling it with the tightness of his grip, because Peter had just licked the head of his dick.

Mike’s heart thudded and he swore he could hear it, could feel its vibrations all around the room. He focused on Peter, who turned would-be shy but-were-really sly eyes up to him, holding his gaze as he slowly slid his lips over Mike’s cock.

“ _Jes-sus,_ ” Mike hissed, at Peter deciding Mike’s balls made a better playground, were a better site on which to employ his tongue. The thumping in his chest; no, in his _bones_ that Mike was experiencing turned sharp and staccato, louder and imperative.

Peter brought both hands up to stroke Mike’s cock and the entire floor shook with the series of short, strident blares that was—

“It’s no use.” Peter pulled off and away, sitting up. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I can’t do this with Micky blasting away on that bugle, like a herald, announcing the countdown’s officially begun. It’s putting me off my stroke, so to speak.”

“The…” Thuds and echoes! Oh, for fuck’s sake! “Especially,” Mike agreed, grimly, “when they’re getting louder.” And making a more fanciful, triumphal tune, accompanied by the thump of footsteps up the staircase.

“Sorry.” Peter pulled an apologetic face to go with the word. “I can’t concentrate of giving head with that rhythm in my head. Like, I can’t blow your horn while Micky’s blowing his.”

It was funny enough to almost make Mike laugh, despite the inconvenience. And the discomfort. “I know,” he said, the intimacy dispelled. _For now._ “And we’d better go see what he’s up to. He goes crazy—”

“—ier,” Peter corrected.

“Crazier,” Mike acknowledged, “on the first day of Christmas.” He swung his feet to the floor with as loud a thud of protest as he could, regretting it when Micky incorporated the volume and beat into his bugle solo, which became a victory pean when it became obvious from the noises Mike and Peter made moving about the room that they were getting up, getting dressed and getting out.

“Micky— Mick- _yyy_!” Mike spluttered when, the second he stepped outside his room, he was grabbed and kissed by lips that had been thoroughly warmed up and exercised by playing a bugle solo. “The _hell_ , boy?”

“I don’t make the rules, Mikey!” Micky, dancing in excitement, jerked his head up…to the mistletoe pinned over the bedroom door frame and that Mike had been standing under. The mistletoe he’d pinned there.

“Did we ration him to one mistletoe kiss a day last year?” Mike asked Peter, hip-bumping his darlin’ out of the danger zone. Damn curly-haired Christmas freak could keep his lips—and all other body parts—off of Peter.

“I’ll check in the book.” Peter led the way down the stairs to the den where the box—the huge wooden chest—of Christmas stuff was already out, waiting. Waiting to be unlocked, by the keeper of the key.

“Come on!” Micky urged, pointing at the lock, then at Mike. “I still don’t know why you squirrel it all away, why you don’t trust me—”

“It’s for your own good, you Christmas junkie,” Davy answered, from the stove. “We have to cut you off from your supply.”

True, but the ritual, one of several, made up the warp if not the weft—Mike didn’t know which was which or which was worse—of the fabric that was life at 1334. “You mean you didn’t find it?” he inquired, backtracking up the spiral stairs to stop halfway and reach up to the balcony…where he pulled free a small key he’d painted the same color as the metal and stuck there. “Guess you missed this spot whenever you had to dust. Oh wait. Ya missed the whole pad too!”

He ruffled the loon’s curls. He couldn’t be mad, not when Davy, happy to have another tea drinker in the pad, was trying to convert him to English teabags and placed a cup, dark brown with aromatic steam coming from it, on the table for him, then dashed back to the sizzling stove.

“Bullseye eggs?” Mike called, remembering the name Davy gave to the dish of eggs fried in a hole in a slice of fried bread.

“Also known as frog in the hole!” Davy reminded him, over his shoulder. It was a special breakfast they had in his home, at this season, and that Davy had cooked for the past two years here. “With a hat!”

Oh yeah, the bit cut out to make the hole. No, Mike couldn’t be mad, not with the prospect of a decent breakfast, and not when Micky was vibrating in anticipation like that. “Catch,” he said, tossing over the key, and Micky did, but instead of opening the chest, dashed over to the stove, where a loud smacking noise told the listeners he’d surprised Davy with a mistletoe kiss too.

Micky hurried back before Davy retaliated with a smack of his own, one more likely to involve a spatula—or in Davy-speak, a fish slice—fresh from the frying pan than his lips.

“Ya hung some on the arch, too?” Mike peered over to see Davy jumping up to rip it free.

Micky didn’t answer, too busy unlocking the magic Christmas trunk and diving in head-first.

“Confiscate his bloody mistletoe,” Davy ordered. “I’m betting he got a whole wheelbarrow full, wholesale.”

“And you are rationed to one Christmas activity per day,” Mike reminded Micky, or what could be seen of him, with his top half still inside the trunk.

“Decorating!” Micky answered, emerging festooned in strings of lights and strips of bunting and links of paper chains.

“Pad or tree?” Peter asked, the question not even out of his mouth when he was almost knocked down by Micky whirling past him, leaping onto a table to begin draping tinsel over and around the picture frames and ornaments on the walls…and the furniture on the floor.

Mike made a grab for the ornaments mixed up with the glittering strips, catching them before they hit the floor. He held up a bright red glass bauble.

“I remember when we got that.” Peter took it from him.

“I think we all do,” Mike assured him. “I don’t think any of us will forget that Christmas gig, two years ago…”


	2. Chapter Two

**December 1964**

Mike peered around at the traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, wondering how much of it was normal Christmas shoppers and how much—if any—was due to the event they were headed to. “Micky—” he began.

“Mikey?” came the prompt, bouncing-with-fizz—seasonal and carbonated—reply, Micky still trying to make some sorta cutesy double act, part of his whole ‘top bedroom vs. bottom bedroom’ thing happen.

“ _Mike_. I might ain’t sure about this,” he admitted.

“Might…” Micky decoded the Texas-speak and gave a knowing nod. “Oh, _I_ get it. You got cold feet, huh?”

“Ooh,” came in a wince from the back seat of the Ford Woodie. “No bloke likes to be told he’s got performance anxiety! Even hint at a lack of performance where I come from and you’d get yerself a nutter, mate!”

Hoping his, “Just the one? Not…three o’ya?” was sotto voce enough, Mike also tried not to catch the other threes’ eyes in the mirror. “I ain’t got _any_ kind of anxiety about my performance,” he assured them. “Got the opposite, in fact.” He gave them a few seconds to work that out. “Just, well, the Christmas gigs and jobs we been getting so far this month, like the technical college ball and that office party in the hotel ballroom…they ain’t been this sorta call.”

“Oh. So it’s more a case of when you imagined yourself playing at a venue on Hollywood Boulevard, it was a different sort of place and event?” came in a more mellow tone from behind Mike.

 _Peter._ Mike caught a glimpse of dark-blond hair and less-tan-than summer face in the driving mirror. His first view of Peter had been of his bare feet, right before Mike’s eyes were drawn to his mop of mid-blond hair, and Mike had stopped and stared. Well, seeing a guy sitting on the sidewalk in a wetsuit at that time of the morning, his head bent over the book he was reading, would make anyone do a double-take, right?

As if feeling Mike’s stare, Peter had raised his head, and Mike had found himself looking into melting caramel-molasses-brown eyes, not the blue he might have been expecting to go along with the light-colored hair. Good. He preferred brown eyes. Never been around people with blue or green or—

“Michael?” Peter prompted.

“Huh? Different sorta place?” Mike took another gander at the traffic and the vehicles driving in this area of LA’s Hollywood. “Different sorta car, maybe…”

“Hey, Pete took the surfboard off the top.” Davy tended to stick up for his roommate.

“And the mattress from the back,” Micky added, curiosity and envy tinging his tone. He’d been fascinated by the single mattress fitted into the back of the Ford wagon. “I bet you seen some good action, right?” Micky had said to Peter, pointing inside the back of the wood-paneled surf mobile, when the guy had moved in. Woodies were known as bedrooms on wheels.

“Oh yeah. And how. I’ll always remember a fantastic layback off Point Dume one sunset last year. And I shacked big time out at Malibu earlier this summer _and_ got to ride the backdoor at Topanga just last month. That day was _wild_ , dig?” Peter had smiled wide.

Later, in the kitchen, Mike had flicked the kinda naïve bassist a glance. “You know Micky wasn’t exactly asking about _surfing_ , right?” he’d said.

“Yes, I know, Michael.” Peter had frowned. “Why…what did you think _I_ was talking about?”

As Mike stared at him, his face creasing into one big question, Peter had used his elbow to nudge the faucet shut, his glass of water filled, and strolled off, whistling.

Mike…still hadn’t figured the guy out. It looked to be a long process, what with all that “feel the sun, smell the sea, and hear the reverb of a surf guitar,” being just one small part of Peter. No matter—Mike was dogged. “No no, she’s fine!” he protested now, in response to demands what was wrong with their vehicle. He patted the dashboard to assure the car he meant it. He couldn’t do with her breaking down on them, being another bill to the add to the handful needing dealing with…reason he’d agreed to take his engagement.

“Oh, I think I see.” Micky turned to the others. “Where Mike’s from, a supermarket’s just, I don’t know, an adobe hut or something and—”

“You think I’m from _Mexico_ , boy?” Mike queried. He belatedly registered that Micky was in the passenger seat. “Hey, how come you got to ride shotgun after what happened and what we said about—”

“But here, supermarkets are really big deals, and the opening, well, it’s a special occasion!” Micky plowed ahead. Full steam.

“In New York City, too.” Davy’s voice took on that tone that told Mike—told all of them—what was coming. “When I was there, on Broadway, in _Oliver!_ , the owner of a fancy store invited the whole cast of _Oliver!_ to the gala opening. We performed a couple of songs for him, from the original score of _Oliver!_ , the musical that won the—”

“Tony Award,” they chorused along with him.

“Yes, we actually performed the same medley of songs we did at the ceremony for the—”

“Tony Award _s_ ,” they chorused along with him. Again.

“Say there, didn’t the play get more nominations? Not just Best Original Score?” Mike knew he shouldn’t, but—

“Tennoms, threewins,” Davy shot back in one breath and all one syllable, almost before the question was out. “Including Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. Ahem.” He jerked his thumb at his chest.

“That was a nom, right…not a win?” Micky asked, his tone sympathetic.

Davy glared. “Well, as I said to Ed—Ed Sullivan, that is—when I was on his show, the—”

“Ed Sullivan Show.” The chorus was flagging now.

“Yeah, the same night as—”

“The Beatles,” the three of them chipped in, wearily.

“Oh, I told you before.” Davy examined his fingernails.

“But to go back to what I was saying…” It took a lot to deter Micky. Mike would find it one day. “Supermarkets here are really grand and pretty. Oh, not the one at the Beechwood strip mall, sure, but along the boulevards, some are, like, built in Spanish Colonial Revival style or Spanish Baroque or even Rococo!”

“ _Micky?_ ” Mike queried, throwing him a glance.

“What? I studied architecture, man! I got a bit of a bug on it.” Micky blushed.

“Like, they’re ornate? All arched bits and pointed bits, like a town hall or a cathedral?” Davy asked. “Or—”

“Or…a weird building that…kinda looks like a cake. Or maybe jello?” Mike peered out at it, their destination.

“I think it’s fruit,” Peter corrected, his head out of the car window to see the white and painted structure better. “What d’you call that, Micky, those eateries like the Fish Shanty or Tail ’O the Pup on La Cienga, West Coast kitsch? SoCal whimsey?”

“I think it’s….” Mike hadn’t studied architecture so didn’t have the right words to describe the way-out, rounded building, their venue. He drove past all the bustle outside, looking for somewhere to park and saw the parking lot around the back. It was cordoned off. “Looks like you’re up—you got us this gig,” he instructed Micky, jerking his head at the security staff manning the barricade.

“Yeah, via my agent,” Micky was explaining a second later to the uniformed guys. “Well, ex-agent. Well, the guy who took over when my ex-agent retired. His cousin.”

“He was an agent too?” Davy asked, getting out with his percussion bag once Mike, through to the lot, stationed.

“Nah. He sold vacuum cleaners.” Micky slammed the car door behind him. The two of them were quicker, not having big instruments to retrieve from the car, like Mike and Peter with their guitar and bass and banjo, although Micky had his lucky drumsticks with him. “But same principle, right?”

While Davy was thinking frantically how to chop on that, and Mike hoping he wouldn’t go with any riff on _sucking_ , Micky waved and whistled at a guy standing smoking near the side door. “Manny! Hi! All this your doing?”

He waved a hand in the direction of the gathering crowds out front, where the oversized trapeze was being slung and the long tightrope strung. They turned to watch a van with ALL CREATURES GREAT AND PAWS on the side pull in and Mike made a grab for Micky when the vehicle’s windows revealed it contained a large pack of dogs.

“ _No._ ” Mike shook his head when a saucer-eyed Micky opened his mouth. “And no, that can’t be your Christmas wish. Ya had a half-dozen already. Howdy, sir.” He stuck his hand out to the man.

“Hey. Yeah, mostly my doing. Hi.” Micky’s ex-agent’s cousin shook hands. “You’re a little late. Come change?” A little harassed, he hustled them through a side door into the large building.

Mike hefted his guitar and took a peek around at all the store’s goods and the vivid, colorful Christmas displays. Good time of year to launch a business like this, he guessed. All the bright red and green, the sparkling silver and glittering gold was making even him, with his money worries, feel festive. Christmas was a real nice time of year. He redoubled his efforts to hide his feelings from the others. No reason for them all to be worrying and scheming how to make things stretch to make ends meet.

“I’ll say! And how! In fact, I’ll raise that to a hubba-hubba!” Micky interjected, rubbing his hands together, pointing his forefingers at two…well, go-go dancers, Mike supposed.

He stared too, although more discreetly than Micky, he hoped. But it was hard not to, when the chicks were wearing nothing on their bodies but bunches of fat, round balloons from their torsos to their ass…ets, with one girl’s green and the other’s purple.

“Dang it—why don’t I ever got a pin when I need one? Or a peashooter?” Micky lamented.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Davy replied, looking down at Micky’s groin.

“Wait.” Mike looked at the myriad displays of fresh produce around the huge market, then back to the chicks in their green and purple, with little leaf-like caps on their blonde hair. “They look like bunches of grapes, man! Say, our stage clothes ain’t…” He couldn’t go on.

“No, course not. Here…” Manny led them to the STAFF ONLY section through the back and indicated a table covered in colorful clothes. Bright orange, bright green, bright yellow… Mike held the _costumes_ up one after the other. “A carrot? Corn on the cob? Peas in a pod?” He tried to control his yelp. “But this is all…”

“Food.” Manny nodded. “It’s all food costumes, yeah…” He, like them, turned to narrow his eyes at Micky, who…hadn’t told them this. Micky’s smile was sheepish.

“But…” Mike scrabbled among the clothes. “Pineapple, lemon, strawberry, and a goddam tomato? It’s wrong!”

“No, the tomato _is_ a fruit,” Peter replied.

“Well, _I_ ain’t.” Folded-armed, Mike glared at them all.

“Not even…these?” Peter held up first an eggplant, then a banana costume, his face guileless.

Mike turned his glare onto him. No one was _that_ innocent.

“Guys, _look_!” Ecstatic, Micky was wriggling into a white and wide-around-his-waist outfit that was held up by suspenders over his skinny shoulders. He stuck his hands into the colorful sponge circles with holes in that the white dish contained. “Froot Loops in a bowl, with a spoon, see! And there’s a cupcake one too! I can change halfway and—”

“Mick, ya can’t possibly play drums in that!” Mike protested.

“So what’d be new?” Davy asked. But he wasn’t laughing when he saw the limited choice of smaller-sized costumes.

“You’re pint-sized, so if the milk bottle fits…” Micky handed him the squat white bottle-shaped outfit with its silver cap.

“Please go change! Just grab any costume—it doesn’t matter!” Manny pleaded.

 _It…kinda does_ , Mike couldn’t help thinking, when he came out of one changing room a few minutes later in a bright yellow mustard bottle costume…at the same time as Peter came out of a second changing room dressed as…a hot dog…with a thick wiggly yellow stripe down the middle of his body. He, and Mike, looked from the squirt to Mike’s yellow all-in-one, with its pointed yellow nozzle hat. The effect, of the two of them together, was— Mike swallowed.

“Oh, well. And it could have been more blatant.” Peter was a peacemaker, Mike had discovered.

“Wut? How?” Mike’s mind belatedly tripped over that last word. Blat—

“We could have been the sausage…and the bun…” Peter smiled, and made for the stage from where the rhythmic thudding and pounding on a drumkit was coming.

“This…this is _insane_!” Mike howled, following. “No one in their right mind would—”

“Guys! Isn’t this just a stone gerr-oo- _ve_!” cried Micky from the platform, where he was…dressed as a bright pink lobster and banging away on novelty drums shaped like huge tins of red and white coffee.

“Butter-Nut.” Mike read from the drums, rolling his eyes.

“But _our_ nut,” Peter replied.

“In a nutshell,” Mike capped, then grinned. “Where d’ya even get all this cr—stuff from, anyhow?” he asked Manny.

“It’s all props from a Screen Gems show,” the guy answered.

“Must be a helluva crazy show that had all this,” Mike mused.

“ _Bewitched_? Yeah, it is!” Manny lit another cigarette. Mike shook his head no when they guy held out the packet. “There was an episode where Darren was pitching a healthy eating campaign to a client and Samantha’s spell went wrong and made all the prop food grow giant sized and come to life and Darren yelled ‘What. The. He…alth?’ He pretended it was the title of his pitch, see!” He wiped tears from his eyes.

“I…don’t think I saw that one,” Mike admitted.

“Oh, it was banned by the network.” Manny straightened up. “You can’t say ‘hell’ on TV. So, all ready? You wanna run through your songs while I go check on the things out front?”

Something about Micky’s face caught Mike’s attention…and roused his suspicions. “Why do I think there’s more about this job ya ain’t told us?” he asked Micky, striding right up to him.

“No! There’s nothing!” Micky protested. “Except that allthesongswedogottabeaboutfood.”

The last was muttered and so fast that it took Mike a few seconds to get it. “Songs about _food_?” he repeated. “And nothing else?”

“Well, drink, too. Any supermarket stuff in general.” Micky tried a smile.

“You still got your lucky drumsticks with you, kid?” Mike asked. At Micky’s puzzled nod he continued, “Cause I’m _this_ close to shoving ’em in a place you might not then feel is so lucky afterward.”

“It’s all right, lads, I’ve got this,” called Davy, finally joining them, having found a costume that fitted. Something brown and— At that moment, there came a volley of hungry-sounding barks and growls and the troupe of performing dogs charged over and hurled themselves at Davy, slobbering and nipping. With a yell, Davy turned and ran, the dogs following, licking their lips.

“Well of course they’ll chase you…if you’re dressed as a Christmas turkey leg! Go change!” Mike yelled after Davy, fighting harder against _this_ eye roll. Rate things were going, he’d be needing glasses—special shiny Christmas ones with clamps to keep his eyeballs in place.

Within minutes, Davy was back, in another outfit. “See, when I was on Broadway, in—”

“ _Oliver!_ ” came from the three of them, on autopilot.

“Yeah, where I was nominated for a— Argghh!” Davy turned to flee at the dogs returning for seconds.

“Argghh? Not a Tony Award?” Micky queried.

“Oh, Davy, man, they’ll chase after a strip of bacon too!” came Mike’s comment on Davy’s second costume and the mutts slavering for it.

“Run!” cried Micky.

“Through flowing water, so they lose the scent,” Peter advised.

“Oh, hell’s bells.” Mike shook his head.

“Don’t you mean, _jingle_ bells?” Peter’s smile almost made Mike feel better. _Al-most._


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!

“We’d better go after him, see he’s okay.” Mike was the one to say it. For all Peter shared a room with Davy, he didn’t tend to worry about Davy—or Micky—being in dutch. Funny, when he had younger brothers himself, and Mike didn’t. Maybe that was why? Whatever, with nature hating a vacuum, it led to Mike playing the…well, more parental than big brother role, he supposed. He was the organizer, the responsible one, the guy who devised schedules and rotas and—

“I do so vacuum!” Micky protested. “Yet, sure, I hate it, but I do it, when it’s my turn.”

“Huh?” Mike stopped walking and stared at him. “Why are you talking about cleaning, now?”

“Because you…” Micky clammed up and just made a vague gesture at Mike.

Damn—had he been speaking his thoughts out loud? It wasn’t the first time Micky had cottoned on to something he’d been pondering. Mike had put it down to Micky being a little intuitive, able to pick up on half-spoken cues and read faces, but, as usual, there was no time to ponder this.

They were back in the more crowded employees only section now, where Davy was fine, and where the dogs’ trainer, their personal vet, manager and even a makeup lady were all explaining how it was an act, that the pack was trained to chase a kid with meat around, in circles, usually.

“You see ’em on that show, _Pickle_?” their proud manager asked. His face fell. “That kid’s a monster. These child stars, they’re all weird. Crazy. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. It ain’t right. Lord knows what they grow up like.”

“ _If_ they grow up,” Davy added, not looking at Micky lying down for the pack of yipping dogs to use him as a trampoline, obstacle course and even his clothes as a tunnel, for hide and seek.

His costume getting ripped in the process gave Mike an idea. “Say, I can’t help noticing you got a sewing machine here,” he observed, pointing at it.

“Yes?” said the pack’s stylist, and its wardrobe lady, in unison.

Mike ground the toe of his show into the floor. “Could I borrow it?”

It didn’t take long, especially when the dogs’ turn came and the room emptied, and soon the four of them had their clothing altered, customized to make it less costume-like. “It’s abstract,” he tried to explain as they walked back through the store to the stage. He held back the boughs of a very decked-out tree for Peter to squeeze past.

“Thank you. Yes, more like _thoughts_ of food.” Peter said, smoothed down his streamlined getup, approval in his tone.

“Micky often has thoughts of food,” Davy pointed out.

“Okay, so more like the _idea_ of food,” Mike tried to clarify.

“Ha! Like Davy’s English cooking then—that’s just an idea of food!” Micky hooted.

“You two…” Mike gave in, his mind running on a stylized version of an outfit. Shirt, pants, formal wear, or work wear…band wear. Band clothes. Band uniform. Taking an aspect and heightening it or highlighting it and—

“Michael?” Peter said, or repeated, tuning up both guitars. “The dog act’s finishing out front, and from the faces Manny’s making through the door, I’d guess we’re on next.”

Mike started to panic then. “Songs about food? They’re all do-wop! About going for malts or baking pies or eating cotton candy or—”

“And not _Strange Fruit_ ,” Peter, now tuning his banjo, threw in.

“Nah, they’re out there with the dogs,” Micky replied, watching with his nose to the glass where the grape-impersonating chicks, not go-go dancers, were holding out hoops for the canines. Mike betted he was hoping that the dogs’ claws or teeth were sharp enough to burst balloons. Micky shot back when the huge, tall glass doors were flung wide and the crowd surged forward to the stage a little.

Was that their name being announced? Mike’s panic ratcheted up to flight-or-fight level and he eyed the distance to the car, calculating their chances.

“Lads, like I was trying to tell you earlier, leave it to me. Key of C major, steady four-four and you lot back me up on the second chorus. I’m starting at the first chorus, give ’em what they want…” Davy snapped his fingers at Micky.

As Micky hit his sticks together four times to count them in, Mike did a double-take at Davy, his face now grimy and his costume ragged. He thought he might have opened his mouth to ask a question, but any sound he made was drowned out by Davy’s theatrical trilling of “Food, glorious food!” like a barker’s call for the supermarket goods. The song was very familiar to them all from Davy playing the LP of _Oliver!_ that he’d been in on Broadway, and for which he’d been nominated for a Tony Award.

The little English showman worked the stage, small as it was, and the audience, as confused as they were, and had the crowd with him right from the first exaggerated—and accompanied by him rubbing his belly —“In-di-ges-tion!”

At least half the listeners joined in the final “Magical food, Wonderful food, Marvelous food, Fab-u-lous fooooood,” ending. Trying to breath normally and not hold his breath, Mike noted Manny nodding happily. Thank the heavens.

Mike relaxed a little then, and a little more at Micky’s, “Stay with C Major, guys,” just before he launched into a Cuban mambo beat. Peter joined in on bass, making it sound like a double bass somehow, and Mike clapped along for two bars before he added in guitar. By rights, the song should have had a sax, but they improvised, vocalizing the “da da da dah da-da dah, da da da da-da dah—as did the audience. The latter, Christmas-happy, maybe, also provided hand jive, and yelled along with Micky’s, “ _Te-qui-la!_ ”

Micky intoned the word with his face turned in the direction of the blonder of the two dancers, or models, or whatever they were, his expression hopeful, but to no avail. “Doubt you’re even old enough to drink coffee, kiddo,” she scoffed.

Which might have been what prompted Micky to segue into _Java Jive_. It started conventionally enough, with Micky declaring “I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java jive and it loves me, Coffee and tea and the java and me, A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!” but then, that being the extent of Micky’s knowledge of the lyrics, he was forced to improvise. To vamp. To scat. In a variety of voices and pitches.

“He just listing different drinking utensils…and drinks?” Mike asked Peter, out of the side of his mouth.

“And booze now,” Peter replied. “In fact, I think he’s just singing the contents of the shelves he can see. So with his poor eyesight, his scope is a bit limited.”

“Long as he don’t start reading out the prices and the special offers too.” Mike tried to hope for the best, wracking his brains for another song about food.

Davy must have been doing the same—or jealous of the attention and applause Micky was garnering—because the clapping had barely died down before he shouted, “ _Daaay-oh! Day-ay-ay-oh_ ,” staggering back in surprise in when the audience yelled, “Daylight come and me wanna go home!” in reply and _bam!_ they were into the _Banana Boat Song_ , as a call and response audience-participation number, much to the Monkees’ surprise.

Glancing at Peter showed him looking over at Micky, and identical smiles curling both their faces. It took Mike a second to understand why, but then he remembered the parody they both dug. Well, all four of them did, but Mick and Peter grooved harder on it. “Go ’head,” he suggested. “Freberg it up a little.”

In the comedy version, it was the hippie bongo player telling the singer he was too loud and that he “don’t dig loud noises,” but the schtick worked fine with Peter complaining to Micky. If the audience didn’t get the objections at first, by Peter’s, “It’s too shrill, man. It’s too piercing!” they were chuckling, and when a few lines later, Peter begged Micky not to sing about spiders: “I don't dig spiders!” the crowd was howling with laughter.

Peter got extra applause when he took a bow after the echoes of the final long, drawn-out “hooooooom” finally died, and a lot of the women— and a few guys—called “More!”

“Me?” Peter jerked his thumb at himself.

“ _Yes!_ ” called his new fans.

“Well, I do know a folk song about food.” Peter swapped his bass for his banjo. “And it goes something like this, No, it goes _exactly_ like this!”

Mike didn’t know Pete Seeger’s _Beans, Bacon, and Gravy_ was that lively and fast, or maybe it was just the way Peter played it, solo. It was kinda similar to the food song Davy had kicked off with, dreaming about a full belly, and even mentioned some of the same food, as if they’d planned it that way. Huh. Neat.

“Thank you!” Peter looked startled at the loud applause his solo number received. “What, another?” And now he sounded disbelieving. Mike didn’t know how much of that _aw shucks!_ was a put-on, but saw how the line of young women making up the front line of spectators ate it up. Mike’s lips turned up in a smile at how complex Peter was proving to be. “Well…” Peter looked down as if surprised to see his hands had started strumming the strings, and gave a helpless shrug at the crowd as he launched into another fast-paced folk song, _Cripple Creek_. 

Mike hadn’t been at all familiar with Appalachian folk tunes before moving to LA, but he was getting an education in that genre from Peter. Peter’s verve and happiness when playing the banjo, his true instrument, shone from him, and Mike liked seeing it, being close to it. He understood why the audience clapped along, wanting to be a part of not just the song with its hokey words and images, but the performance

‘“To have some fun.’ Thank you!” Peter took a deep bow as soon as he’d repeated the last line a couple of times, and moved off stage.

Mike…kinda wanted to do a solo too, to feel that energy moving through him. They should do this, have spotlight numbers in their act—

“That song…”

He almost jumped at Manny’s nervous-sounding words, not having seen him sidle up with another guy, this one big and well-dressed.

“It had the word ‘bone’ in,” he assured the agent and who he guessed was the manager or even the owner of the market. “That’s food.”

“We don’t sell bones!” the man protested.

The vibe, the pull to take the stage was getting too strong to be denied. “D’ya sell…apples? And honey?” Mike inquired.

“And sugar?” Davy threw in, guessing what was coming.

“And fish?” Peter started a fast walking rhythm on the bass. “If not books…”

Mike flashed the suits a grin as he raced to center stage and nodded to the others to get that compulsive, almost primitive rhythm going for the riff-driven speeded-up sixteen-bar blues that was moving through him. One day he’d do this really solo, not even his guitar, oh, but maybe with handfuls of maracas, but for now—

‘“You can't judge a book by looking at the cover!”’ howled the delighted, rapt, audience, giving the final line of the quatrain right on cue, already into it and staying with it right to the delighted end.

“More food-focused!” demanded the owner when the clapping and whistling quieted enough for him to be heard.

“Right. You asked for it. Stand back,” demanded Davy, clapping a straw boater on his head and snatching up a cane, then twirling it as he soft-shoe-shuffled across the stage, the rest of them picking up the beat. Once again, he missed off the beginning of the song, going straight to the line that gave it its title: “Oh, I’ve got a love-er-ly bunch of coconuts…”

His winks and mugging at the audience brought home to Mike how suggestive the musical number could be. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a dance like the one Davy did as he whistled the song’s instrumental break, sort of strutting in a tight circle flapping his elbows, then facing the audience and jumping with his bent legs so his knees pointed out either side of him.

And oh, the crowd lapped it up, singing along to the “roll a bowl a ball a penny a pitch,” all together, then those on the right against the left side, then the chicks against the guys, at Davy’s directions. And the length of time they all held the note of the last “pitch” along with Davy before he snapped off the final “tch” sound and took off his straw hat to waggle it in one hand, matching the cane in the other!

“Blimey!” commented Peter.

“Bloody hell!” added Micky, and the two stared at each other in amazement, Davy’s Englishness having spread.

“No, something food-based that’s more up-to-date!” demanded the hard-to-please owner. “And a little—”

“Sexier? Gotcha covered!” announced Micky, shoving his drumsticks into Davy’s hands and shoving him down onto the drum stool, the expression on his face promising to see Davy and raise him.

“This number’s called _Buttered Popcorn_ ,” he announced to the crowd, his voice deep.

 _And it’s goddam raunchy!_ Mike found himself thinking, at the way Peter played the R&B number, making the bass sound even more like a double bass this time, and playing it dirty. Not as dirty as Micky was singing it though, with all the groans and gasps as he detailed his baby’s love of ‘buttered popcorn’, uh-huh, liking it greasy and sticky and gooey and salty, uh-ha, more butter, oh yeah, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner too, uh-uh.

“Man, there’s gonna be mass arrests out there!” Mike hissed, at the way the crowd were echoing the sexy moans and sighs.

“And a whole lotta Christmas lovin’!” Micky responded happily.

Seeing Micky was gearing up for another number, Mike hurried to throw a coat over his shoulders and help him off-stage, holding tight to his clothes to prevent him sneaking back on again. “Happy now?” he asked the hard-to-please owner.

“I was hoping for an original composition, and something that references our world-class fresh fruit section,” the man replied, indicating that area of the market.

About to snap back that the guy didn’t want much, huh, Mike let the sight of the gleaming pyramids and rows of green, orange, and yellow fruit sink in…and connect with a song he’d been working on.

“Michael?” Peter caught his attention. “What are you thinking?”

“That I’ve found the title and missing lines for that song…” The song was trite, tied-and-true, a guy begging a girl for another chance, and the tune was simple, as he’d been playing around with writing as poppy and commercial as he could stand without compromising more than he felt okay with. But this would—he hoped—give it that twist… 

Mike didn’t waste any more time, just took the mic and half-yelped “Apples, peaches, bananas, and pears!” There was a moment of silence before he started in on the first line, but his bandmates were of one hive mind enough to harmonize on the _you_ and _truth_ and _cruel_ …and again the audience sang along to the refrain, this time yelling, “Apples, peaches, bananas, and pears!” with one—loud—voice.

“That goes into the repertoire?” Mike asked the others at the finish, getting a resounding “Yesss!” in reply, hardly audible over the cheers and clapping. He grinned.

“And if fruit sales are good, we should get a percentage after that,” Davy, not missing a trick, told Manny.

“More!” yelled the crowd.

“Well…” Mike was thinking rapidly.

“I don’t think so. The long hairs are done—it’s me now, the actual star hired to open this goddam joint.” With that, an aging, slacking-at-the-jowls and thickening-at-the-middle guy pushed through the people and up to the door, scowling at everyone, the Monkees most of all.

A boo came from the crowd and Mike was just glad the audience hadn’t actually got apples, peaches, bananas, or pears, just in case…


	4. Chapter Four

“Who’s Mr. Sweetness and Light there?” Mike inquired, leaving the stage.

“That’s Frankie Catalina Sr.!” Micky slipped out through the doors with him.

“Oh. Wait—senior?” Mike tried to puzzle it out.

“Yeah.” Micky paused to look at Davy, who, smiling and nodding in acknowledgment of the cheers and applause, slipped into the crowd. Well, a young female section of it. “What’s Davy doing? D’you think he’s okay?”

“Seems to be.” Mike had noticed him soaking up the attention like a sponge at the gigs they’d played so far. Well, nothing unusual for a theater kid, he guessed, but this audience being younger and teenaged added a new variant. Be interesting to see how that developed… “Go on? Tell me about Mr. Personality here?” Who was currently haranguing the press photographers and audience members with cameras.

“You know, that actor from way back? He added the Sr. to his name when his son started out in the bizz, so people don’t mix them up.”

“How on earth could people confuse this elderly paunchy guy with the obvious toupee to the young star of the beach flicks?” Mike asked, not getting it.

“Outta my way, civilian!” The old guy turned his sneer on a member of the public who’d come too close. “Don’t touch me—don’t you know who I am?”

“Oh.” Mike nodded. “I get it now.”

“I think they use the same shade of hair dye too,” Micky added, pointing at the unconvincing straw-colored hairpiece. “Or possibly that thing on his head’s a prop he stole from one of those mysteries he made at Mammoth Studios.”

“But which one?” asked Peter, joining them.

“That’s the mystery!” the three of them chorused together.

“All right, all right. Let’s wrap this up. I gotta declare this supermarket officially open, get my check and get outta here. Where’s the goddam bottle?” Frankie Catalina Sr. scowled, peering around. If he was looking for the poor blonde woman who’d been next to him earlier, presumably his assistant, she was gazing into Davy’s eyes, deaf and blind to everything else. He tsked, then his eyes lit on another blond. “Kid!”

“Me?” Peter looked all around.

“Yeah. Get me the champagne bottle. I’m freezing my nuts off out here and wanna go home, for Christ’s sake.”

“But—” Peter tried.

“Do as I say, boy! Don’t talk back to the highest-ranked star of Mammoth Studios!” yelled the actor. “My name’s up there with every giant of the industry!”

“I—”

“’S’okay, buddy. Go on. We got this.” Mike patted Peter’s shoulder and caught Micky’s eye. Micky nodded.

With a long, drawn-out, “Okayyy,” Peter vanished into the store.

“Can I get your autograph, Mr. Catalina, Sr.?” asked Micky. He held out a felt pen…and a banana. “ _Murder at Pond Creek_ was good and all, but I gotta say I preferred _Mystery at Hill Mountain_.”

“And who could forget _Murder at Homestead Ranch_?” asked Mike, finding he had a roll of bathroom tissue in his hand and holding it up for the actor to sign. He bit back a smirk at the double-take Frankie Catalina Sr. did at it, and how he was whipping his head from it back to the banana.

“Oh, that’s not a patch on _Mystery at Murder Manor_!” Micky protested, proffering…a sock. A dirty sock.

“Which wasn’t as good as _Murder at Mystery Manor_ ,” Mike countered.

Frankie Catalina Sr. tried to bat away the diaper Mike was holding out for his signature.

“Say, what did we all think of _Problems in Passageway Alley_?” Micky asked the crowd. “No, silly me. That was from his commercial for the diarrhoea and nausea medicine! I bet we all remember the jingle, right?” He addressed the gathering: “If your stomach’s feeling dismal—”

“Make it right with Pepto-Bismol!” they chanted.

“June!” yelled the actor, flinching and shrinking before the audience. “Get over here and do your job, you lazy, no-good—” He stopped when a guy in a trench coat and Homburg popped up, the white card in his hatband saying PRESS.

“Can you tell us about your latest movies, sir?” the reporter asked. “I understand you finally got another contract after the closure of Mammoth Studios, this time with Pocket Pictures? Where, from the giants of the seventh art, you’re going to be now working with…how should I put it…persons of restricted growth. Is that right?”

“What—”

“Proportionately-sized little people?” the reporter pressed, before Frankie Catalina Sr. could finish gaping.

“Like, actors of diminutive stature?” Mike threw in.

“But—”

“Some of the biggest small people stars in the business!” enthused the reporter, cutting the actor off. “And the list of movies you got lined up: _Terror in Tiny Town_ , shooting at the same time as _Problems at Peewee Place_? Sounds a teeny-tiny treasure of a double bill-ette!”

“ _Return to Lilliput – Take no Prisoners_ ,” Mike improvised. “Gonna light up a small-sized silver screen with that one!”

“ _Murder on the Miniature Express_ —another mini-winner!” Micky assured him.

If he’d been going to say anything, the crowd’s sniggers and snickers, now guffaws and howls, at which the washed-up actor’s face fell, prevented him.

“Here.” Peter returned with a magnum of champagne, blinking at Micky whipping off a trench coat and hat. “Although I don’t think—”

“About time!” Frankie Catalina Sr. grabbed the neck of the bottle, holding up his other hand to fend off the store’s owner, rushing up. “I declare this supermarket open. Good luck to all who shop in her.” With that, he smashed the bottle high against the jamb of the open glass door…to squeal and shriek when the neck broke off in his hand and broken glass and cold liquid rained down on him, all lit up by the flashes of cameras and underscored by the crowd’s jeers.

“Yeah, shoppers’ll need luck—not to cut their feet,” Mike agreed, pointing at the thick shards of glass flying and landing on the floor.

“He’ll need more than luck.” Micky indicated Frankie Catalina Sr.’s hairpiece, sodden and shrinking in real time, like a hamster getting a bath, as rivulets of champagne ran down from it. “Like, a bag to take that home in.”

Words and phrases such as “not a prop bottle” and “Mammoth Studio” could be heard among the splutters and gibbering.

“Well, I guess our work here is done?” Micky threw an arm around Manny’s shoulders and closed the agent’s gaping-open mouth for him.

“Which means our payment is due?” Mike signaled to Davy. They’d better get it and split. His mind returned to its calculations of which bill was more urgent to pay first.

“Yeah…sure.” Manny pulled his gaze from the mayhem. “All laid out back in the staff section.”

“Laid out…?” Confused and suspicious, Mike dashed through the supermarket after Micky, stopping short in the employees’ room at the wooden chest on the floor. “Micky—”

“Isn’t it great?” Micky had the lid open of the Christmas hamper. As the other two joined them, Micky lifted up a turkey and a ham. A round pudding with holly on top kept a huge circular cheese company, separated by tins of sugar biscuits and salt crackers. Tucked around them were boxes of chocolates, jars of preserves and packets of coffee and tea. A bottle of wine stood sentry at each corner and Christmas crackers and decorations could be glimpsed too.

“ _Great?_ ” Mike echoed, visions of not sugarplums but their overdue bills and rent dancing in his head.

“Yeah! You’ve been working so much, so worried that we didn’t have enough—”

“Anything,” Peter cut in.

“For a real Christmas—”

“Our first Christmas together,” Davy interrupted.

“So I got us this!” Micky finished.

The bills fluttered, in a crazy dance, filling Mike’s mind because he couldn’t waft them away with a fan made of the money they’d earned, and he closed his eyes.

“Michael?” asked a voice Mike recognized as Peter’s.

“Micky…” He opened his eyes, trying to make his voice work. “Come here.”

When Micky stepped right up next to him, Mike forced the swirl of mocking bills away and let in instead glazed ham and steaming, flaming plum pudding, essential ingredients for a first Christmas with a new, well, _family_. A family who’d seen his struggle and who, especially Micky, had thought of all this and all of them. Mike raised one hand and then other, to open his arms…and pull Micky in for a big hug. And within seconds, the other two were in there too for an even bigger, better, tighter, longer, eight-armed, four-person one.

***

“Our first Monkee hug!” said Peter, having no trouble seeing which memories Mike was lost in. He eased out a half-page of newspaper from the bottom of the chest. “And our first press clipping too!”

 _C-Lister In Christmas Champagne Chaos_ announced the headline and while most of the picture was of a soaked and squealing Mammoth Mysteries star, the Monkees were in full view to one side.

“That was a good hamper,” Micky called from where he was climbing the wall like a, well, Monkee, and arranging a tinsel halo on the taxidermy eagle.

“Good Christmas,” Mike corrected. The wooden box, once emptied of the supermarket goodies, had become the storehouse of their Christmas keepsakes and memories. It was part of their seasonal traditions, traditions which were added to yearly, such as dressing up in Christmas costumes, after last year’s stint in Santa’s grotto…and thanks to the Christmas-themed commercial Mikey had gotten.

“But this is the only bauble left?” Peter still held the bright red ornament. “Just one tomato? We had more, and apple-shaped ones too.”

“Well yeah, but what with the hamper containing wine, which none of us were used to, and four bottles, meaning one each…”

“Which we stuck a straw in and drank like soda while decking the halls…” Peter finished for Mike, nodding in understanding at their drunken attempts at trimming the tree. “Still at least we’ve got the chili pepper string of lights.”

“Tree?” Micky’s ears pricked up from where he was up on the second-floor landing, making the space there into a winter wonderland.

“Another day, just as doing the outside of the pad is,” Mike reminded him. He dug a little deeper in the box of Christmas memories and found the program from the high school winter prom they’d played at two years ago. The theme had been Love Stories, attendees dressing as famous couples, and that job too had come with outfits provided—they’d tended to take any job, be it school, college, frat, dances, bashes or balls, that did, not having really suitable clothes of their own.

“Davy got us that one, didn’t he?” Mike smoothed the program.

“With it having one catch…” Peter recalled

***

**December 1964**

“How do I look?” Davy asked as they strode into the over-decorated gym filled with Antony and Cleos, Bogie and Bacalls and Gomez and Morticias. He fluffed up his cravat and smoothed down his pencil-thin, penciled-on mustache.

“Like you’re from Charleston and have the most terrible reputation,” Mike told him. “I still don’t quite get why we all got sent different costumes.”

“Ah. That’s because we’ve got four different dates,” Davy replied quickly, but not as quickly as a chick ran up to him. A chick with masses of dark curls, a tiny waist and a wide skirt. With a, “Fiddle dee _me_ ,” Davy caught her up in his arms and only staggered a little under the smacking kiss she laid on him.

“ _Dates?_ ” Mike yelped.

“With the other committee members who organized this,” Davy explained, trying to unstick his lips from the committee chairwoman. “They didn’t want schoolboys…”

“Oh.” Well, his chick was pretty and up for…fun. If the rest of the chicks on the committee were—

“Mike.” Micky swallowed, giving a tiny motion of his head at the group advancing toward them. “I think they’re all seniors.”

“Well yeah, I’d expect them to be in their final year,” Mike started, only to trail off as the small group neared. “Ah. Seniors as in senior teachers…”

“More like senior citizens!” Micky hissed. “And they’ll be grabby!”

“They’re not that old.” The women were in their thirties at most. “And you mean crabby.”

“I know what I _said_ , Mike!” Micky squeaked. “And that one looks familiar…”

“George Michael Dolenz!” The woman on the end pointed at him. “Stand up straight! Shoulders back, stomach in, hands out of your pockets!”

“Ms. Stricter?” Micky paled.

“ _Schrechter_ ,” she corrected. “Oh, you haven’t changed a bit since high school. No slouching! And that hair! Well? Come along!”

“What’d she teach, drill in the school’s branch of the Marine Corps?” Mike eyed the firm woman.

“Worse.” Micky gulped. “Sex ed. And she’s got a cane!”

“Really?” Acting on impulse, Mike grabbed Micky’s oversized jacket, trilby and fake machine gun, slipping the first two on. “Go on, kid, I’ve got you. Skedaddle,” he ordered, raising a challenging eyebrow at what was currently a gangster’s moll with a prop handgun but who in real life was a strict, disciplinarian sex-ed teacher with her own cane who was looking for a date…

***

“And you still get Christmas cards from Ms. Schrechter.” Back in the present, Peter sorted through more of the box’s contents. “It was nice of you to swap partners like that for Micky.”

Mike gave a smile he hoped was vague enough to pass for noncommittal and not smug. Then his smile fell as something he’d never thought about before struck him. “Wait. Micky sneaked off with that cheerleader, right? So there must have been an extra teacher on the committee who didn’t get a date!” He thought he recalled an athletic-looking woman in a white tennis dress, with short black hair and wire-framed glasses.

“Not…necessarily…” Peter kept his eyes on the box of decorations.

“Not…” No, not one athletic-looking woman in a white tennis dress, with short black hair and wire-framed glasses, but two. Mike remembered them now, clear as day. “Wait.” He stared at Peter. “You—”

“Still get cards too, from Ms. and Ms. Landers, the sports instructors, uh-huh.” Now Peter raised his head, the look in his eye faraway. “That was an…interesting evening…”

“Babe—”

“Oh, here’s Davy’s Yule King crown from that prom,” Peter interrupted Mike, crossing to Davy and putting the sparkling gold circlet on his head for him.

“I’ll never know how you got voted Christmas Prom King,” Micky called down over the balcony. “You didn’t even go there!”

“Didn’t I, Micky? Didn’t I?” Davy smiled big. “I loved that first Christmas here. I learned then just how bloody sexy I really am.”

Which was when he’d started capitalizing on it. Monetizing it, really.

“Yes, here’s the flyer for your English Christmas Kiss-o-Grams Service, Davy!” Peter pulled the paper out of the box.

‘“Treat yourself to an English Prince this Christmas,’” Mike read off the flyer with its picture of Davy in his crown and cloak. ‘“Agent for bookings: Micky Dolenz.’ More like shadow, the way you went with him to all the parties and dinners and dances, where he was Frenching chicks.”

“ _Snogging_ ,” corrected Micky. “ _English_ Kiss-o-Grams, remember?” He swung down from the balcony to land on the floor of the den and bounded over to rummage in the box too. “Aww, Davy, here’s the strawberry Chapstick you used to protect your lips during all the kissing!” He held it up.

“And here’s the bill from the hospital where you were diagnosed with mono from all the kissing.” Mike held that up too.

“Talking of protection, or lack of,” Peter added, and Mike high-fived his witty, gorgeous sugar, then pulled him in for a kiss, French or snog, he didn’t know the difference and didn’t much care, as long as it was with Peter.


	5. Chapter Five

“Oi, put him down and eat your breakfast instead,” ordered Davy, depositing the last of the plates onto the table. “Here’s me, slaving over a hot stove…” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand in emphasis. “As opposed to Micky, who _slavers_ over a hot stove.”

“Ooh.” Peter winced on Micky’s behalf at the zinger.

“And he’s wearing the Christmas apron too!” Micky called over, making Davy realize he still had it on, and whip it off.

“Oh, wow.” Reaching the table, Mike looked at the huge metal baking tray, one of Mrs. Purdey’s they really should return to her, that was packed full. “How much is in there?”

“A whole loaf and a dozen eggs.” Davy rattled cutlery onto the table too.

“That’s three slices and three eggs each.” Micky was good at food math.

“And, ta-da!” Davy fetched another dish, this a more prosaic, smaller one, from the oven to place down too. “Cooked toms. All of that vine we had in the fridge. You and Peter like ’em.” He pushed the dish nearer to Mike.

“What about me?” Micky was good at food pathetic too. “Wait. Hold it just _one second_.” He examined the table with the magnifying glass that appeared in his hand. “I can’t believe there’s no—”

“Baked beans.” Davy plonked the saucepan down between him and Micky.

“Phew.” Micky stuck a serving spoon in and stirred it around. “For a second there I thought you’d been replaced by an imposter.”

“How d’you know I haven’t?” Davy checked overhead for mistletoe, checked the back of his chair, and sat.

‘“Gets you up…”’ Micky pointed at the beans.

‘“And sets you up,”’ Davy added.

‘“Just how I like ’em,”’ the pair finished together, and Micky nodded, seemingly satisfied that their usual blending of UK and US beans adverts proved Davy was Davy.

‘“They’re really baked.”’ Mike threw in a slogan from his youth, his head angled at the younger two, making Peter laugh. He seasoned the tomatoes with salt and pepper and served Peter. “S’matter, Mick?” Micky wasn’t diving on the food.

“It’s not Christmassy enough,” Micky wailed. He looked from face to face around the table.

“Not even with the costumes?” Peter rubbed at his.

Shaking his head, Micky turned puppy-dog eyes on Mike.

Who weakened instantly. “Just _one_ thing,” he conceded, wagging a finger at the shameless drummer boy…who was out of his chair before Mike had finished.

“Me or each?” he asked over his shoulder from the Christmas chest.

“You,” Mike replied.

“Too late.” Micky was back, his hands full.

Mike had expected Micky to scatter the figures from the crib among their plates and dishes, like table decorations, but he was bearing red and green paper hats, from last years’ Christmas crackers. Mike had never seen such a thing as that kind of cracker until two years ago, when Davy’s family had sent him a box of what Mike had thought were giant candies, all red, green and gold twists of paper. But he’d learned, and had enjoyed the bang as the paper constructions were pulled apart, revealing the small toys to play with or figurines to hang on the tree, the silly crowns to wear on their heads and the groan-making jokes to tell one another. He accepted his red hat with good grace.

“Least he didn’t get himself a party puff.” Davy poured more tea. “You know, a blow tickler?”

Mike sometimes suspected Davy made up sexual-sounding names for things, claiming they were the English versions, just to see people’s reactions. “You mean a party horn. Or party blower.” Wait, those sounded worse names for the paper tube that you blew into, for it to unroll and make a parping noise.

“Also called a party pipe, when I was growing up. Although that’s something different now,” Peter added, his lips fighting a curve.

“I still think my idea for the whole of Beechwood to blow at the same time to get into the Guinness Book’s a good one.” The light of planning was back in Micky’s almond eyes.

“What’s that smile for?” Davy pointed a suspicious fork at Mike.

“Oh, nothing,” Mike said, in the tone of someone who’d made the tiniest—but still effective—pinprick in every noisemaker he’d found in the pad. He wasn’t going through that racket another Christmas. “I was just thinking I guess this brunch, for which, thank you, Davy”—he waited for the others to add their thanks to his—“counts as dinner as well, huh? And hey, imagine cooking this amount of food for each meal over the holidays!” It seemed impossible to Mike.

“As long as it’s not me doing it, or the washing up. Oh, and I’m not doing this lot, by the way,” Davy warned.

The helpings were big, but the amount of food wasn’t a struggle to eat. All four Monkees could pack it away when they had the chance.

“Mmm.” Mike sighed in satisfaction. He placed his fork on his empty plate and rubbed his stomach, giving the tiniest touch of his foot against Peter’s as he did so. “Dang, that was so good and I ate so much I need a lie down. What about you, Peter?” He pressed his foot a little harder.

“Oh, I’m fine, thanks, but I’ll make you a peppermint tea, for digestion.” Peter was at his wide-eyed best, and Mike…still didn’t know exactly how much of it was an act. _Suspected_ , though.

“Say, talking of decorations…” Mike looked over at the heap on the coffee table that Micky had abandoned in favor of eating. “Should go do the bedroom, huh?” He stood and went to pull Peter’s chair back for him, to help him catch on.

Micky’s chair scraped back in one hasty squeak. “But I always do the bedroom, Mike!”

“Yeah, when we shared the room. But now—”

“But it’s _tradition_!” Micky was doing the wet-puppy-dog-eyes now.

“Of course it is!” Peter got in first. “And I bet it’ll look great, Micky. If there’s anything orange or yellow, or blue for Mike…”

Calling back, “I’m on it!” Micky was soon bounding up the spiral stairs, his arms full.

“What?” Peter inquired of Mike, making him realize he must have been glaring. “It makes him so happy to put things up.”

Mike fought against it, but a clenched-teeth, “He ain’t the only one,” escaped him.

Something sounding uncannily like a snort came from the sofa, where Davy was buffing his nails and looking through Christmas cards, and Peter’s shoulders shook where he stood with his back to them, piling used crockery into the sink.

“Roll up, roll up!”

Micky’s fairground barker call from the upstairs landing minutes later caught Mike by surprise.

“Come and see 1334’s, no, Beechwood’s, most Yule-ish bedroom!” Micky called. “You’ll gasp, you’ll sigh, you won’t believe your eyes!”

“Yes, let’s go see.” Mike made a stubborn-sonovabitch-Capricorn last-ditch attempt to get laid. “I want to really appreciate it properly. Thoroughly, in fact. At great length.” At the top of the stairs now, he called down, “As does Peter, I bet. Oh, my, it’s…comprehensive.”

Peter joined Mike. “It’s very…abundant, Micky,” he praised. “Thank you.”

“I got some more ideas…” Micky tapped the bag at his feet.

“And what about our room?” Davy called up. “I’m the poor relation, is it? Get the leftovers?”

“No, Davy! I got another bag, and another theme for our room!” Micky assured him.

“Not if I get there first!” Davy dashed into their room and with a whine, Micky vaulted from the balcony to the downstairs bedroom, doubling back to snatch up three bags full of Christmas cheer, then vanishing inside again.

Davy slipped out. “I’ll keep him busy,” he whispered. “And—”

“We owe you,” chorused Mike and Peter, knowing the drill.

With a muttered, “And I’ll collect,” Davy straightened his shoulders and went back in.

“Come on!” Mike nudged into Peter from behind. “We’re on the damn clock here!” He raced around one half of the room, taking down half of the strips of tinsel and bunting and holly and balloons, while Peter did the other. “So what was the theme in here?” he wondered. “No inch left bare?”

“More Christmas than there is in Macy’s,” Peter suggested.

“That’s better.” His pruning finished, Mike threw himself on the bed. “Don’t look quite so much like a Christmas parade’s gonna come marching through here for the mayor to switch on the lights now.”

“I like these.” Peter switched on the string of colored lights twined over and around the headboard. “They’ll be really pretty in the dark.”

“You’re pretty any time,” Mike told him, pulling him down onto the bed. “Come here. Want my first Christmas kiss as a couple.”

“We kissed this morning,” Peter reminded him.

“That was without costumes. And decorations.” Mike added to his argument by wrapping his arms around Peter to hold him close for a long kiss. Mike threw a leg around Peter too, bringing him even closer. His sugar couldn’t get away now.

“I don’t want to,” Peter whispered, looking up into Mike’s eyes.

“I…I’m glad.” Mike’s heart was too full, and the matter too complicated to voice right then and there.

“What about you?”

“Me?” Mike repeated. “I ain’t the one women give the eye to! That started right back there, at that job in the supermarket, didn’t it.” He recalled how the first couple of rows of spectators had suddenly been women, staring at Peter shining in the klieg light during his solo numbers. “Unless they were all banjo enthusiasts.”

“Oh, come on!” Peter poked Mike in the ribs. “You don’t think Micky and Davy are the only one who get slipped notes at gigs, do you?” He stopped, peering into Mike’s face. “No. Wait. You do too? You sly dog!”

“Sly? That’s you!” Mike countered. “Acting all bashful and shy but really you’re sly as a fox.” He wrestled Peter, managing to get on top of him and pin him to the bed with his body. Peter was stronger-built and more athletic, but Mike’s wiry strength wasn’t for nothing. Oh, this was nice, letting their mutual arousal build slowly and in lockstep. Letting…and encouraging…

He enjoyed this view of Peter with his bangs tousled away from his face. It was unusual. Mike pounced, sliding his fingers into Peter’s temples to hold him still enough to capture his mouth in a slow, sensual kiss. Not that Peter needed any holding, happy for Mike to lick the seam of his lips, flicking his tongue tip back and forth, nipping at the soft flesh. When Peter’s lips parted on a half-sigh, almost-moan, Mike thrust his tongue inside and swept it over every inner surface, tasting the added salt and sweet of their meal.

“So.” Mike pulled back, just far enough to drop kisses on Peter’s eyelids, one after the other, making him giggle and his eyelashes flutter. “How many chicks who slipped you their digits did you call, huh? And think carefully ’bout your answer, ’cause I’m gonna smack that peachy little ass of yours for each one you say.”

“Well…” Peter grinned, pulling his wrists free of Mike’s hold on them that was keeping them pinned to the bed to fold his arms behind his head. “Let’s see now…”

A weird clop-clop noise came from outside, below in the street, or at least Mike thought it did. “Huh.” He stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it. “I thought I heard coconuts.”

“As in ‘A Lovely Bunch Of?” Peter had been there earlier, had seen Mike reminiscing.

“No…” Mike sat back and listened a little more. “As in clip-clop. As in…whinny?”

The harrumphing noise from below could only be classed as a neigh. Mike sat back more and Peter sat too. “Do you think—” Mike began.

“Hullo, chaps?” came a familiar female voice from below. A familiar _English_ female voice. “All right to pop in?”

“That that’s Amanda?” Mike finished.

“And bring Quicksilver with me?” floated up.

“And that she’s got a horse?” Peter added.

No. Couldn’t be. Despite himself—and his plans, and his burgeoning erection—Mike slid off the bed and down the stairs to see…Amanda. In the pad. On a horse. Well, dismounting from a horse. “That’s a horse.” Mike pointed. He appealed to the other three. “Can…everyone else see a horse? Like, a real horse? Not, like, Toby in a costume, or something, but an actual horse?”

“Stop saying horse.” Davy took the reins from Amanda and slipped them over the dappled gray’s head.

“Pony then.” Mike shrugged.

“It’s a horse,” came in two English voices.

“Why?” Mike finally thought to ask, pointing at the horse.

“He’s over fourteen hands,” Amanda answered, patting its neck.

That wasn’t what Mike had meant, but he was wise enough to leave it there.

Peter came to examine Quicksilver. He leaned a little way into the animal and it leaned the rest of the way into him. He placed his face close to one side of its long nose and breathed calmly in and out, like it was doing. Mike stared.

“Santa come early?” Davy asked Amanda.

“And how d’you get that under the tree?” Micky added.

Amanda smiled sweetly at Micky, as she’d been tending to do since revealing that she’d known he’d been seeing other chicks at the same time as seeing her…well, ever since she'd gotten her revenge. “Two things.” She polished her engagement ring on her riding pants, or whatever they were called. “You are hereby formally requested to play at my Engagement Ball!”

“It has capital letters?” Peter looked like he could hear them.

“So you’d better save the date, chaps!”

Mike shot a glance at Micky in case he had any idea about saving the day…by sweeping Amanda off on the goddam horse. Amanda crossed to their calendar and wrote on it in red. “There.”

“Mike, I don’t wanna play at her engagement party,” Micky whispered to Mike.

“Ball.”

“Yeah. I do kinda wanna cry, but I won’t.” Micky’s lip quivered.

“No, she said—” Mike abandoned that. “I know, babe, but we kinda sorta need the money.”

“It’s just as bad for Mike,” Davy observed, from where he was perched on the horse’s back. He made it turn in a circle, then lift up one leg after another. “He made out with her. Oh, and Peter was dating her, and I was her ward!”

“Yes, I do seem to have rather a chequered history with the inhabitants of this house.” Amanda raked them all with her gaze and made her diamond ring catch the light.

 _She’s just rubbing poor Micky’s snub little nose in it!_ Mike brushed against him, to show support. “Well, thank you for thinking of us, Amanda. You’re just arranging it now?” It was cutting it close.

“Yes, Mummie’s on her way from the airport.” Amanda stroked the horse’s bangs. Or fringe. Or whatever they had.

“And you’re…collecting her?” Davy said what they were all thinking, looking from Amanda to Quicksilver.

“Oh no! Mummie only likes being picked up by men.”

Mike debated asking about that, but closed his mouth.

“And the second thing,” Amanda continued. “I’m having a festive supper party as well.”

“When?” Mike inquired, betting he already knew the answer.

“This evening. An impromptu Christmas get-together, for Mummie to meet my new friends.”

“Oh, I got nothing to wear.” Micky clicked his fingers.

“It’s a Come as You Are Party.” Amanda eyed him.

“As in…” Mike feared the worst.

“As in you come exactly the way you are when you get the invitation.”

The four of them looked at one another. “I can explain,” Mike said.

“You’ll have to.” The minx’s grin was wicked as she made a quick jotting in a small notebook. “And no changing clothes. That’s why I’m delivering the invites in person, to see what everyone’s dressed in and make sure they’re wearing it later. If you cheat, you have to pay a forfeit.”

“We won’t cheat,” Davy assured her, sliding to the floor then holding one stirrup while Amanda mounted from the other side of the horse.

“We can’t afford to pay anything,” Mike muttered.

Which was why, a few hours later, a curly-haired gingerbread man, a shorter toy soldier, a blond angel and, oh God, a circus ringmaster followed the shining star along North Beechwood Drive to the Willises’ house…


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone!

Literally following a star—Micky gibbered, pointing out the illuminations on the Willises’ roof, that cascaded down the front of the house. Someone, and Mike betted Amanda, had gone all out with the Christmas lights.

“Look how they blink one after the other so the trails look like they’re moving!” Micky clutched Mike. “You know, for a Christmas Eve treat, I reckon I could—”

“No. No you couldn’t.” Mike had a nightmare vision of Micky’s attempts at intermittent lighting of something that was better left unlit plunging the whole street into permanent darkness, shorting out the electricity just when people were cooking special, elaborate meals… Well, at least the burning torches the local carried to 1334 would enable them to see…see the pitchforks they also carried.

“I did a good job with Peter’s halo,” Micky argued.

“Mick, your first attempts to make it light up made it catch fire!” Mike protested.

“Reason we held the dummy run on the dummy.” Peter smiled.

“Yeah, poor Mr. Schneider.” The sight of his hair crackling away had given Mike a turn, imagining it was Peter’s smooth locks getting frizzled. Mr. Schneider’s were smooth and flat again now, though, seemingly regrown. Mike…didn’t understand that damn marionette, and didn’t think he wanted to.

“He’ll give you a lump of coal for your present now.” Mike poked Micky in his gingerbread middle. “But yeah, Pete looks great.” Always. But this evening his halo shone, making his hair blonder and eyes more amber than ever.

“Just not looking forward to peeling off the battery pack. Did you have to stick it on with electrician’s tape?” Peter rolled his shoulders, and his wings fluttered. “These colored bulbs shining in the real trees either side of the house are pretty.”

“Oh, it’s English!” Davy nodded approval at the ‘snow’ covered roof, windows, and bushes, visible when they got nearer to the door. “You lot ever seen snow before?”

“Sure! It’s in all the best Christmas movies.” Micky flicked Davy’s tall black shako hat, knocking it a little crooked. “What? You didn’t say real snow!”

“And I’m from New England,” Peter reminded Davy.

“Does that mean Davy’s from _Old_ England? You could play each other at sports!” Mike couldn’t resist joining in the riffing.

“All the noise is coming from around the back of the house. Let’s go see.” Micky pulled at Mike’s hand.

It did sound like a smaller version of a county fair or carnival, and looked a little like one when they got there to find people, mostly neighbors and Amanda’s magazine co-workers, either gathered around outdoor heaters and braziers, with the younger ones sliding on the frozen swimming pool and all of them exclaiming and cheering when a machine on the roof blew a long sweep of ‘snow’ over them. It was pretty.

“Hullo! Glad to see you stuck to the rules and the spirit of the occasion!” Their hostess slinked out of the back door. “Welcome to Amanda’s Christmas Corner. Or my Winter Wonderland. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Or…decided what to wear yet?” Davy pointed at her thin, clinging, white satin spaghetti-strap ‘dress’. What there was of it. “You’re in your nighty there!”

“I think it’s a negligee,” Peter said.

“A chemise?” Mike suggested. “Mick, what do you think?” He nudged him to stop him staring at Amanda’s legs in their sheer, shimmery stockings, the garter tops visible on her thighs. 

“What. Think.” Micky hit himself on the head. “I think it’s—”

“A slip,” Amanda said, her one raised eyebrow and steely gaze directed at Micky. “Oh, I have this fabulous marabou-trimmed robe to go over it. Total Hollywood glamor. I’m trying things out for my trousseau. But I’ve gone a bit kitsch this evening.”

“How kitsch?” Mike asked.

“What, like on a scale of one to ten?” Amanda laughed. “You tell me.” She clapped her hands and moved aside for a line of servers to emerge from the kitchen and circulate with their salvers. Mike gulped.

“None of you”—Mike looked from one Monkee to another—“are to make any gags about seeing their north poles, ya got me?”

“Or their candy canes,” Peter added.

Because the waiters, all men, were in Santa costumes. Well, red robes. Well, very very short red robes, as in silk dressing gowns, pulled tight and held closed with a sash tied in a big bow. And nothing else. Oh wait, there was. Oversized red and white striped candy canes were slotted under the bows to stick out the tops, their curved ends very protuberant. Mike just hoped no one made any reference to sucking on the men’s peppermint sticks. Wait, the most likely person to do that was Amanda.

“I know what you’re thinking: imagine _that_ coming up one’s ‘chimney’ at Christmas.” Amanda’s eyes gleamed. “I thought the ladies—and some gents!—would like the sight. I know. Naughty Amanda.” She slapped the back of one hand. “But I haven’t forgotten the children! Micky, there’s a bouncy castle being set up down there. And do get drinks!” she trilled, walking over to another group. “There’s plenty of fizzy pop…”

“She treats me like I’m a little kid!” Micky exclaimed. He paused, flicking them a quick glance from the corners of his eyes. “Mike, look after my shoes? And get me a Coke?” And, barefoot, he was off to where a gang of children jostled for position at the portcullis entrance to the still-inflating castle.

“Oh, there’s—” Davy had joined the trio of chicks before he’d finished speaking.

“So, just us, babe. Wanna go skating?” Mike asked Peter.

He shook his head. “Too draughty.”

“Babe…” Words failed Mike. “You mean you don’t, you ain’t—” He dipped his eyes down Peter’s body. “Hold that goddam gown down!” he yelped. “We should have sewn weights in the hem, like the Queen’s dresser does to her frocks! What?” He looked defensive. “Sometimes all there is to read is Davy’s English fashion mags. I picked up some tips.”

“What, like make one purse do for every outfit, no matter what it is? Co-ordinate your headscarf to your shoes?”

“No, wear a bright, bold color so I can be seen in a crowd.” Mike deadpanned.

Peter giggled, then shivered. “Told you it was breezy,” he said.

Mike stood as close to Peter as he could to share his bodily warmth with him. “Hey, remember the last time that London loon turned up in the pad unannounced? We were in boxers then,” he recalled. “But I don’t know if I felt sillier then or now, in this get-up.”

“You were lucky this time.”

“How so?”

“We were about to get it on—another minute you’d have got had _nothing_ on, never mind a get-up. Although you _did_ get it up.”

Mike groaned at the stream of awful puns. “Don’t remind me we were interrupted. I’d just about gotten over it, but now I’m thinking we can sneak away…” He shifted, then scowled at the sexy Santa waiter eyeing Peter up. The Santa server averted his eyes, then let out a startled yip. Turning to see what the guy had seen, Mike did the same, but a little louder, clasping his hand to his chest after that medium Monkee scare. “ _Toby?_ ”

“Oh, is this do fancy dress?” Toby sighed. “I thought it was come as you are.”

“And you are…?” Mike thought she _was_ in fancy dress. Well, a costume of some kind. She must be. But what, he couldn’t even begin to guess.

“Yeah, I think—”

“There was a mix-up,” Mike finished for her. Sometimes he thought that phrase would be on her tombstone.

“I misunderstood,” she corrected, holding her head high with as much dignity as her costume allowed. “I thought it was to come as you _are_.”

“Like, are inside?” Peter tried. He tapped his head, then his heart, his hand brushing against Mike as he did so. Brushing against Mike’s quickly swelling—

“Exactly!” Toby beamed.

“So this…” Peter indicated Toby, whose arms and legs and hands were striped in indigo and cobalt and navy and ultramarine while her face was tinted mostly sapphire with periwinkle highlights and her normally blonde hair shone the color of the sky. “You’re…”

“Blue, yes.”

As with so many of Toby’s utterances, this one was met with silence. Quite a long one, this time.

“Well, I damn well ain’t,” Mike muttered at last, their curtailed afternoon delight looming large on his mind. And as for what was looming large lower down…

“See? I knew you’d cheer up.” Peter’s sunny beam matched his angelic costume.

Mike scowled. That wasn’t what he’d meant.

“And you will be later.” Peter’s smile turned wicked at the edges, in a most unangelic way.

Mike smiled. Peter got it.

“No, _you_ will,” his naughty little angel promised.

Good enough for Mike. He idly wondered what Peter would look like in a bright red devil’s outfit. They greeted neighbors, trying to work out what they’d been doing when ambushed by Amanda’s invitation. He did a double take at the Purdeys, with Mrs. P in a tight pink top, floaty tutu and swan-feather headdress and Mr. Purdey, who Mike had expected to be in plus-fours and a V-necked golf sweater, instead in…thick knee-length ballet panty hose over a capped-sleeved, well, _leotard_ on his top half. Mike hadn’t realized that male ballet dancers wore jock straps and cups, and could have lived the rest of his days without seeing one worn by a past middle-aged man.

“Say, I didn’t know the Purdeys had taken up dance,” he remarked to Peter

“They…haven’t.” Peter looked away.

“But—”

“If you can’t handle that, I suggest you don’t look over at the Homers either.” Peter kept his eyes well away from where the elderly couple were sitting. Against his better judgment, Mike took a quick peek and glimpsed the back of a rather fetching housecoat and a chiffon scarf tied over a head full of plastic rollers. About to ask what the problem was with that, he realized it wasn’t _Mrs._ Homer’s back view he could see.

“What _is_ it with this street?” Mike wondered. “I’m kinda scared to even look see if Nyles is here.” Guy was bizarre enough at the best of times.

“Good evening, Michael, Peter.”

“Nyles? _No._ ” Mike clutched Peter as he stared at the very correctly attired businessman, his French cuffs gleaming as bright a white as his pocket square, his slim tie complementing his skinny-fit dark suit, and a raincoat over the arm that carried a leather briefcase. He raised his fedora hat politely.

“How…” Mike couldn’t formulate the rest.

“Amanda caught me going to work.”

“Work?” Nyles? Where? As what? When? “Oh, Wait. Is it opposite day?” It was the only thing that made sense. Not that it did.

Nyles fingered Mike’s whip. “Nice. Is the leather tail triple-plaited?”

“You know, I thought Amanda’s mom was here?” Mike was desperate to change the subject as he jerked his whip back from their curious neighbor.

“She’s waiting to make an entrance.” Amanda, sidling up to them, rolled her eyes. “Mummie’s so theatrical. But I guess it’s about time, see?”

All Mike saw was the troupe of short-suited Santas slinking into the kitchen via the backdoor. A moment later, they emerged to form two short lines, facing one another, raising their candy canes like swords forming a processional arch.

“I’d say that was a guard of honor, but I’m not sure about how much of that she possesses,” Amanda muttered looking miffed and glaring at the servers who shrugged, clearly pressed into this service. A short trumpet fanfare parping out cut off any more words she might have had and the red-suited men passing a prone woman hand to hand along their line from the back Santas to the front pair robbed the guests of words. The front Santas raised the woman to a standing position, high, and she jumped up higher, to land at the head of the rows as though she were a dancer in an old musical.

“Told you she likes being picked up by men.” Amanda took a breath when the applause died away. “America, this is Mummie. Mummie, America. Well not all of it. Beechwood, which has been kind enough to welcome me and let me make a home from home.”

Considering she’d come on a summer exchange and it was now December, yeah. Mike spared a thought for whoever had gone to London to swap with Amanda. Was that poor person still there, months later, too? Wandering near London Bridge, scared it was falling down? No, wait. That would be Toby. Mike was getting disorientated.

“Darlings!” Amanda’s mother swooped on their little group. She looked like her daughter with hazel eyes and dark-blond hair, hers longer and straighter with bangs to mid-eyebrow. She wore a longish silk tunic with droopy sleeves than hung to her wrists to flare out like the mouth of a trumpet or a bell, the top sitting over long pants with similar hems.

“Why is everyone staring?” She fluttered bewildered eyelashes at the guests. “Oh, it’s because of what I’m wearing on my legs, isn’t it? Women don’t here, I suppose? And oh yes, you call them ‘panties’ here, right? No worry, I’ll take them off.”

“No!” Amanda lunged but too late to prevent her mother pulling off her pants…and the tunic’s sleeves, leaving her in a short silk minidress and a long rope of pearls.

“Is that better?” Her mother did a twirl.

“But is she wearing panties?” Micky, back among them, whispered.

“You are not to try to find out, boy, ya hear?” Mike scowled at Micky and turned it into a quick smile for Amanda’s mother. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs.…” What was Amanda’s surname? Did they even know? Luckily he was from the south— “Ma’am.” And was wearing a hat he could tip. He saw the woman give his costume a slow up-and-down, and pretended not to see her lick her lips.

“Call me Minty,” Amanda’s mother ordered. “No one calls me Penelope.”

“Leave it.” Davy’s command made Mike close his mouth, the question left unasked. Davy shook his head. “If you know one thing about the upper class, it’s that you never know the source of nicknames like Flopsy or Stiffy.”

“Maybe not, but I know which I’d prefer,” Micky answered, looking down at his—

“Pongo!” Mike remembered the British consul Amanda had been briefly engaged to. He’d introduced himself by that name.

“And Stinker’s a common one too. I know what yours would be.” Davy shot Micky an evil grin.

“Says the guy known as _Daphne_ at school. That’s right!” Micky countered. “Your sister told me _everything_!”

“School?” Minty twirled her rope of pearls. “I was such a rebel as a schoolgirl!” She drained the saucer of champagne in her other hand and twirled that too as she held it out, level with her shoulder. “I didn’t go along with what my parents wanted for me. In fact, I left school and went to live abroad!”

“Mummie, you left your English boarding school to go to finishing school in Switzerland,” Amanda replied.

“Well, I didn’t marry the man they chose for me!” her mother insisted. “I said no. And he was a _duke_!”

“Who did you marry?” Peter asked.

“An earl,” Amanda replied.

“Not when I married him, he wasn’t! He was only a viscount then. Oh, thank you.” Minty swallowed the refilled contents of her glass. She put a hand on the server’s arm. “Don’t go away, young man. I shall need you close.”

“There’s a full bottle of bubbly right there.” Toby pointed to it on the table

“Oh, you sweet child.” Minty shook her head at Toby’s naivety. “And I understand you four men are a musical group, and I do so hope you’ll be leading us in the Christmas carols later?”

“Literally singing for our supper.” Micky had a hopeful eye on the kitchen, from where food smells were coming.

“Oh, come on! It’s not like that!” Peter protested. “It’s not like we’re really working, like on the seasonal gigs we did this time last year.”

Mike shuddered as he tended to when the Festive LA Tour they’d gotten a slot on was mentioned. "It was all right for you," he reminded Peter...


	7. Chapter Seven

**December 1965**

“Come on, Micky!” Neither of the other two were outside yet, but while Mike trusted that they would be, all present and correct as Davy might put it, within a minute, Micky he wasn’t so confident about. “And don’t say it takes you longer with having drums—I took the kit to pieces and wrapped it up for ya!”

“ _We_ took it to pieces.” Peter ducked under Mike’s arm that was holding the front door open, bringing him closer to Mike than normal. Closer than society would deem normal. Closer than Mike felt… _normal_ with. Just like last night, when, neither of them having dates or elsewhere to be, they’d sat and dismantled Micky’s drumkit, working together smoothly and easily, like they always did on stage. Or in any aspect of music, really. And increasingly in non-music-related areas, the more time they spent together…

Peter’s breath streamed a little in the morning air, although the day wasn’t cold, for all it was winter. Well, it was cold by any self-respecting Texan’s standards, of course. Peter must have just finished a hot drink, one of those sachets of dried flowers or whatever they were he melted or dissolved or what have you in boiling water. Mike thought he could even detect the pine-resin notes of that yellow-green one Peter had switched to once December had rolled around.

“What?” Peter dabbing at his lips with a Kleenex made Mike understand he was staring. At Peter. Again.

“Nothing,” he replied, grappling around for something to add to that as a cover. “Just thinking you had one of your tuzzy drinks.”

“Tisane,” Peter corrected again. He eyed Mike. “I rinsed out the cup.”

“You… _Jesus_ , Pete!” His meaning startled Mike. “I’m not some sorta ogre, always watching to see if anyone messes up or breaks a rule or whatever! No, _man_!”

“I don’t think you’re an ogre.” Peter took a look back into the pad. “So why _are_ you always watching?” _Me_ , he didn’t say, because he was polite.

“I-I— Ooh, wouldya just look at the time!” Mike showed his wristwatch to Peter in proof. “Come on, guys!”

“All right, all right.” Davy emerged. “Keep your bloody woolhat on.” He brushed by Mike, putting enough force into the move to make Mike have to take a half-step to stabilize himself, but not enough that it could be called a shove. He stayed close after, leaning against Mike. They all tended to huddle or crowd one another, but Mike knew his closeness to Peter was different.

“Look sharp, look sharp, men! Ten-hut!”

They scattered like ninepins as the wrecking ball that was Micky emerged, pushing his drum trolley. “Let’s get this show on the— Van!” He pointed to where it was turning up the drive.

“Dodge compact van,” Mike clarified.

“Groovy color.” Peter added to Mike’s words, approving of the orange. “And dig that stripe!”

“But it doesn’t make the vehicle go faster,” Davy cautioned, in an approximation of Mike’s accent.

“No, course not. That’s just got one around the van and it needs two running from front to rear across the body to do that!” Micky added.

“Ha-ha.” Okay, so he got passionate about race cars and road cars. “And for your information, there _are_ stripes that go around like that. Only they ain’t called racing stripes. They’re bumblebee stripes.”

“Ouch. That stung,” Peter replied, cracking Mike up.

The van braked and the driver’s door and the side door opened in synchrony. Two black men swung their legs to the ground and got out, staring at them. “Oh, hell no,” came from one, looking them up and down, his exclamation bringing more black faces peering from the van. “You’re—”

“Careful there,” cautioned the driver.

“ _Men_ ,” finished the first speaker, pointing at the Monkees.

“Oh, they got a white road crew!” asked another man. “Or what, like manager, beautician, dresser, bodyguard?” Voices inside the van laughed and called out more possible roles. This eased the atmosphere, and noises of people and things shifting around inside the van could be heard.

“No, we ain’t roadies.” Mike knew they should have worn their band clothes to meet the other groups on this mini tour Pete had gotten them on. It would have made a better impression. Well, better than any Micky could make, with his pajama legs visible under his coat.

“Well, where’s the group?” asked the driver.

“Here.” Mike was a little bewildered.

“No, the Monkettes.” The second guy spoke slowly as though Mike was stupid.

“The _Monkettes_?” It didn’t seem to be a joke, some new-band hazing ritual, or locker-van talk. “Oh, what is this Monkettes? We’re the _Monkees_. A four-man rock band.” Mike indicated them, wondering what all the exclamations inside the van were about. “Blossom put in a word for us with their record label, to get us this job filling in for them on the tour the company’s puttin’ on, to showcase the acts? I know it’s just for one night officially, but it’s almost guaranteed we’d be staying on as well after.”

 _And we have to, seeing as we need the money_ went without saying.

“Yeah, we know they did. Blossom are righteous to their friends.” The driver sighed, scratching his head. “I’m Elgin.” He tipped his head at three more guys getting out of the van. “And the Marvels. _Not_ the Marbles.” He pointed a warning finger. “Well, this is hella awkward. Jackie, take over?”

The guy addressed as Jackie scowled at him. “I gotta do the dirty work? Guys, Monkees, it’s just that we need, is well, a different sort of people. Oh yeah, I’m Jackie Dubois. Doo-bwa. Just like that. No matter how it’s spelled, it ain’t pronounced ‘dubious’. So, we all clear on why your four can’t cut it?”

“Oh, I get it.” Micky stepped forward before Mike could say no, he wasn’t clear at all. Micky stuck his chin out. Well, as far as it could.

“Mick—” Mike tried to head him off.

“It’s because he’s English, isn’t it?” Micky patted Davy.

“And I thought it was because I’m short. Gets people excited, man.” Davy played along. “Or what, you don’t dig blonds?” He grinned at Peter.

“No, man, we’re cool with the different…nationality and height and _hair_ color and all!” protested Elgin, turning to the others, who nodded and shrugged. “Just, we were expecting something else. Not…like this.” He waved at the four of them.

“ _What?_ ” Mike demanded, beyond puzzled now. “What were you expecting, man?”

“CHICKS!” Elgin replied.

“Lay-deez,” explained Jackie.

“Evening dresses and high shoes,” said a Marvel.

“Sparkly necklaces and earrings and…things.” Another made a figure-of-eight with his hands.

“A girl group to take Blossom’s place while they hopped on over to Vegas for a night. We got all the guys we need, but we only got just one other act with a chick, Tom and Cheri, since Frankie and the Foxes bailed.” Jackie whistled. “That Frankie cat is one lucky hombre.”

“Birds? But we’re _fellas_. Blokes,” Davy replied.

“We see that, man. But we need a dame act to fulfil the bill. Sorry.”

Mike was the one who was sorry, his heart sinking. He’d already mentally spent the fee they’d get from this—was relying on it!

“Better call Lionel at Talent.” Elgin’s suggestion was greeted with acceptance. “We come in, use your phone?”

“Mike!” squealed Davy. He needed his share of the money to get back to England. “My dad—”

“I know, good buddy.” Caught between Davy’s promise to his dad, Pete’s commitment in New York, unpaid bills and overdue rent, Mike sucked in a deep breath. “Sure, guys. Come on in. But let’s not go making any hasty decisions here, huh? I ain’t too proud to say we really need this gig. Need the money.”

“Like I said, sorry.” Jackie led the rest of Talent Record’s Festive LA tour inside. “But you don’t meet the requirements.”

“And like I said, don’t be hasty. Give us a second to think…”

“Michael.” Peter nudged him where they’d formed an automatic Monkee huddle. “We all want this, especially as it’s likely to lead to other gigs, once we have the exposure from this, but it doesn’t seem we can get it. I mean, we can’t exactly turn ourselves into a girl R&B band, can we?”

“Well, no— Micky?” Mike stared at the lightbulb that had appeared above Micky’s head and switched itself on. He made a grab for it before anyone else saw it. It burned his fingers, making him shake out his hand. “I ain’t sure I like that look in your eyes.”

“Yeah.” Davy, the recipient of most of the look, shivered. “Whatever it is, the answer’s no.”

“Guys!” Micky pleaded and somehow they were at the door to the No-Room. Mike blinked. How—

“Look!” Micky pointed at the racks of clothes. They really did have a lot of costumes. “Pretty dresses, high-heeled shoes…” Including those items, most of which were this season’s hem length and color and heel type. Mike had no idea how.

“Wait.” He sagged against the doorframe as Micky’s brilliant idea became clear. “No!” he cried, wrapping his arms around himself. “Definitely not!”

Elgin, behind them, gave a low whistle at the treasure trove. “Man, I don’t think I wanna know what the hell it is you four do for fun around here. But whatever, Prince Charles here’d make a hella cutie.”

Davy preened, then looked annoyed at himself.

“And Curly here…” Jackie, joining them, considered Micky. “Well, some folks go for that skinny, no-meat-on-the-bones look.”

“He’s right. They would. Especially in this!” Micky held up a sparkly dress.

Davy scoffed. “As if. _This_ one, you mean.” He dropped the slinky number into Micky’s hands. “It’s got a built-in padded bra that you’ll need. And goes well with these.” He handed Micky strappy evening sandals too.

“Blossom are a trio.” Peter looked at Mike, who was still gaping, his mouth trying to form words. “So I’m guessing the ‘Monkettes’ have to be too? And you know how I feel about drag.”

“With his arse and chest,” Davy added, with the confidence of someone whose rounded butt looked outtasight in a dress and whose small frame meant he could carry one off.

“Oh no. No. Nuh-huh.” Mike’s lips squinched into a thin line.

“This what I think it is?” Another guy came up, followed by one in an identical suit. “Tito Crenshaw.”

“Marlon Crenshaw. The Crenshaw Brothers?” the second added. “We ain’t brothers, before you ask.”

“And not from Crenshaw?” Mike asked, before Peter could say that all men were brothers.

“Are too. Crenshaw Boulevard in fact.” Tito looked down at Mike. Literally—he was even taller than Mike’s six-two.

“What do you think it is?” Davy asked.

“Why, a bet!”

Everyone groaned at Tito, who looked affronted. “Oh, come on! Tex here won’t do it, dress up as a chick—he’s from the south! You _know_ what they’re like. Pity, because I bet you’re real good, right? Nice and tight? It’d make the case for you staying on the tour and these mini tours always lead to a lot of other gigs, usually some in the same clubs, which saves on gas too.”

“When you say good…and those other adjectives you used,” Mike asked, after a pause, “you mean at playing music?”

“What you trying to say?” Jackie looked affronted.

“Well, _men_ , you know?” Mike shrugged. “We know how they are. But no. No.” He added the last when money started being passed to Marlon, who was shouting the odds and making notes in a small book.

“It’s just for one night,” Micky whispered. “We can switch back when the girl group returns, and then stay on the tour. I need that money. The guy I got the aerospace-grade titanium from is getting impatient for his payment and—” He clapped a hand over his mouth and looked shifty.

“Oh, don’t you worry your curly little head about that!” Elgin knuckled Micky’s curls. “Leona’s got a lot of influence at Talent. She gives Lionel just what he wants, when he needs it.”

“ _What?_ ” Peter took a step forward.

“Yeah, she does the books for him! Keeps it all running and him outta trouble. He’s good with figures but baaaddd with sums,” another guy said, shaking his head.

“Mike?” Davy turned pleading eyes to him. “Micky and I are willing.”

“And that’s half the problem,” Mike muttered.

“ _What?_ ” Micky demanded.

“I said, Peter and I ain’t,” Mike lied.

“So, only one thing for it.” Micky reached out for Mike’s hand and then Peter’s, and dropped his own. “You know what to do.”

“Wha— _Fingers?_ ” Before Mike could think up an excuse, Peter had called even, Mike’s hand had clenched, then straightened out, with all five fingers flat—of its own volition, him powerless to stop it—and Peter, who’d only uncurled one…had won. Mike had never seen such a huge smile on his face. On anyone’s really.

And so, later that afternoon, when the Monkeemobile pulled into the forecourt of a small club in downtown Fillmore, Ventura County, three figures in long raincoats, their pants legs rolled up so they didn’t show underneath, headscarves over their hair and huge dark glasses on their faces, got out. The fourth figure wore a dark suit and vest with matching hat, and a green and white striped tie over a pink shirt.

“Spider.” Mike was still shaking his head. “You went with Spider? After how well that turned out last time?”

Peter moved the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and shrugged. “Don’t argue with your manager,” he ordered in a rough voice.

“Look, fellas! I mean, _look, fellas_!” Davy went up by an octave as he drew their attention to the poster in the glass case outside the front of the club. “For the Festive LA gig! The Dynamos, Elgin and the Marbles—”

“Marvels,” corrected Peter.

“Jackie Dubious—”

“Dooo-bwaah,” camped Micky.

“The Crenshaws, The Hully Gullys, Tom and Cheri, and, _oh_.”

Where Blossom would have been, at the bottom of the poster, was a strip pasted in, saying, _One Night Only, The Monkettes_. Mike looked from the three feminine silhouettes depicted on it to the three of them and his face dropped.

“Michael?” Peter touched his shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

“That…” Mike swallowed. “That we’re gonna need a lot more padding.”


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Sue and 70mtt wanted it.

“There’s probably some in the group’s dressing trunk.” Davy pointed to it, just behind them where the van had dropped it off before its passengers went to check in to their motel. Well, the ones who’d been lucky enough to get rooms this time around. It seemed a rotation system was in place— Mike’s attention was yanked from that by the sight of Micky using a pocket compact to apply lipstick.

“What? I always need a touch-up after a car ride. It wears off,” he explained, making a fish face into the small mirror.

“Yeah, it would, the way you chomp on ‘travel sweets’.” Davy made air quotes. “Which seem to be any candy bar you can get your hands on. And the way you preen—you don’t half fancy yourself, you do. Well?” This was to Peter, who stared in incomprehension. “You gonna get that trunk or wait for it to walk in by itself? We can’t touch it—we’ll ruin our nails.”

“You haven’t even got them on yet,” Peter replied.

“He’s got you there, Davy! You should have said snag our pantyhose,” Micky crowed.

“We’re not wearing—” Davy stared at Micky’s legs. “Wait. You are? You’re wearing tights, already?”

“What? _What?_ I hate being cold, guys!” Micky looked from one to another. “And chicks have all the best stuff. Including better hair products, right, Mike?”

“Well, I…” _Hoped no one would ever find that conditioner to tame thick, unmanageable hair. But it works._ “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Okay, putting on pantyhose I understand. Well, no I don’t. But putting on _nails_?”

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Micky told Davy, “the way he neglects his beauty routine.”

Davy nodded. “Thinks ‘grooming’ is something a man does when he gets married.”

Mike didn’t like the world-weary sigh with head shake they both gave as they looked at him.

Peter had tried to heft the trunk and now straightened. “I’d better go and check us in.” He backed away. “I’ll be back in time.”

“Men!” Micky exclaimed, watching Peter jump into the Monkettemobile and drive away. “Only good for one thing.”

Mike wanted to ask what that was, but needed all his breath for kicking and pushing the heavy trunk inside the club.

“Everything all right, ladies?” asked a deep, grating male voice.

“Mr. Babbitt?” came from three amazed Monkees.

“Who?” ground out the man. “I’m the manager here.”

Mike sagged in relief. That was all they needed. No, the guy just looked and sounded like their landlord. Seemed as much of a creep, too, by the way he was leering. With an, “ _Ooh!_ ” Davy tightened his coat around himself.

“Perfectly all right, thank you. Oh, there is one thing we need…” Micky twisted a finger in the ends of his headscarf where it was tied under his chin. He bent down a little to whisper, still in his high-pitched voice, “I’d love a brandy alexander.”

“My name’s Jim, not Alexander,” the creep said.

“It’s a drink, silly!” Micky slapped his forearm. “A nice cock…tail? Means you have to give it a good shake…” His demonstration, him holding his hands cupped open one above the above and moving them up and down, had Mike whipping his head around in horror.

“Oh, yeah!” the creep groaned. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow. “Sure thing. Back in a sec.”

It didn’t escape Mike’s notice that the letch had pronounced ‘sec’ like ‘sex’ and dropped a wink with it. “That sleazebag was coming on to you when not only does he not know you, but he can’t even see what you look like!” he exclaimed. Between the dark glasses and headscarf, Mike was basically just the tip of a nose and a pair of lips. And not even very much of a nose.

“Well. this is seriously good lipstick,” Micky explained. “It’s that Fire and Ice one. You know, ‘are you naughty or nice, fire or ice? For those who love to flirt with fire yet dare to skate on thin ice’?”

“You’re on thin ice all right here, buddy,” Mike declared, shoving the wardrobe trunk along the corridor.

“It that the one where they ask you all the questions and you have to answer yes to at least eight to wear the lipstick?” Davy asked

“Yeah! Fifteen questions,” Micky confirmed.

“Stuff like, ‘do you close your eyes when you kiss?’” Davy scoffed.

“Uh-huh. I answered yes to thirteen out of fifteen!” Micky boasted. “Ya gotta, to see if you’re ‘sexy, adventurous and just a tiny bit dangerous’.”

“Bet I can guess which you said no to,” Davy challenged.

“Bet you can’t,” Micky countered.

“Can too.”

“Can’t so.”

“Can—”

“It, guys!” Mike begged.

But Davy, like one of the horses he rode, had the goddamn bit between his teeth. “Have you ever danced with shoes off—yes.” Davy ticked it off on his fingers as he and Micky walked and Mike struggled. “Keeping ’em on you’s the problem, with your mania for go-aheads.”

Mike agreed. Those dang rubber flip-flops meant you had to walk going ahead in one direction. Any attempt at turning or backtracking and they fell off.

“And wishing on a full moon…” Davy nodded. “Yeah, while you’re howling at it.”

Mike had to snigger there.

‘“If tourist flights went there, would you take a trip to Mars?”’ Davy quoted. “Duh. Even if they weren’t.”

Mike’s snicker turned into a laugh.

‘“Do stables excite _you_?”’ Davy looked surprised as he recalled another of the questions. “I answered yes to that one, of course, but _you_?”

“It said ‘sables’, Davy. As in, the furs?” Micky informed him.

“It did? Oh. That explains— Never mind.” Davy looked a little shifty.

“And yes, is the answer.”

“Perv. Hmm, bet you said yes to you sometimes feel that other women resent you. And yeah, I can name a few that do, like say, at least eighty percent of the ones who’ve been on a date with you.” Davy’s powers of recovery were quick.

“ _Guys!_ ” Mike burst in, out of breath and wanting this over with. “Can we—”

“Focus up,” they both finished for him together. And with a synchronized eye roll.

“No, cut to the goddamn chase!”

Mike straightened with a grunt after doing all the well, grunt work of pushing the huge box into the girls’ dressing room. “He obviously _would_ streak his hair platinum _and_ wants to wear an ankle bracelet. Gypsy music makes him sad—and scared, like it does all of us after what we went through with that troupe—and if a recipe calls for a dash of spirits, of course he thinks it’ll be even better with two! But for sure he doesn’t think any man _really_ understands him and he _doesn’t_ secretly hope the next man he meets will be a psychiatrist. So _that’s_ how he answered the questions to see if he could wear the lipstick that gives you ‘immoral support’, okay?”

He enjoyed the gaping mouths and saucer eyes of the other two. “And how can you carp on at Micky about lipstick when you got enough nail polish to paint a battleship, huh, Davy?” There. That was everything off his chest…before he had to put padding on it.

“Well, that’s shade it’s too orangey-red for you anyway, Mick.” Davy rallied. “You need a bluey-red.”

“Jim didn’t seem to think so,” Micky simpered.

“Hey, ladies!” The creep in question entered with a laden tray. “I looked that drink you said up in the book.”

“The big barman’s book of big cock…tails?” asked Davy, making Jim’s head spin from Micky to him.

“It’s cognac, crème de cacao, and cream. We ain’t got no crème de cacao. Or cream. But I got this.”

Mike looked from the bottle of brandy to the bottle of milk, stopping at the bag of ice cubes on the way. The guy produced a gleaming metal cocktail shaker. “For you to shake it,” he explained redundantly. “Brandy and ice. It needs shaking. Let me help you off with your things. Your coat.”

Micky slapped at the manager’s roving hands. “Later. The drink’s for the throat. For performing.”

“Oh. So, hey…” Jim leered around the Christmas-decked room. “I’ll come check on you in a few.”

“No, you won’t.” Mike pulled down his dark glasses and stepped into the guy’s space.

“No, I won’t,” agreed the guy, beating a retreat.

Mike grabbed the bottle and took a swig as soon as the door closed. “There’s no lock on this door!” he exclaimed.

“Rest a chair under the handle,” Davy replied.

“They don’t reach.” Mike tried it. “Amazing coincidence, huh?”

“Here,” Micky pulled a screwdriver from his purse. “Jam this underneath. Not quite there. More there. Yeah, that’ll do it. Stop people walking in on us _and_ they make a weapon, in a pinch.”

Mike took a bigger glug.

Davy and Micky were examining the contents of the trunk. “Ooh, nice long elbow-length gloves!” Davy commented. “No need to do your nails, Mike.”

“And hair pieces.” Micky brought them out. “No ned to do our hair.”

“And longer evening dresses. No need to do our legs.”

Mike stared at the gowns. “I’m gonna need another drink first.”

“On it.” Micky was pouring brandy, milk, and ice into the shaker, and Mike averted his eyes when Micky shook it. He appreciated the drinking straw Micky stuck in it after for him, though. Especially when ten minutes later he was staring at himself in the long midnight blue gown with its sparkly sequin overlay. That he was wearing with long gloves. And a padded bosom. And a high beehive wig. Sorry, hairpiece.

“It’ll be different when you’ve got your face on too,” Davy assured him. “Spider eyelashes and wingtip kohl pull a look like this together. Now, the dance?”

Mike was pretty sure whatever Davy was getting ready to teach them he’d never learned in _Oliver!_ where Mike was also certain he’d never dressed like that. Maybe in the ill-fated follow-up musical that had been rushed into production intended to capitalize on its success, and…hadn’t, _Fagin!_?

Davy started the record player and a tambourine-heavy, steady four-beat drum tempo song blasted out. The driving bass line was something Peter would play to perfection, and that “burning, yearning feelin’ inside” the gospel-influenced vocal harmonies sang about? Mike understood it. It was called shame.

“Mike, if you please?” Davy indicated himself and Micky, ready, and Mike drained the contents of the cocktail shake with a loud slurp.

“Shake two-three-four, clap two-three-four, turn right three-four, and left three-four, face front three-four, shoulder shimmy shimmy shimmy…” Davy stopped the record. “Micky, shoulder shimmy, not shake your knockers all over the place—you’ll lose your padding—and Mike, it’s not stand still and shiver. I don’t know where either of you learned to modern dance—”

“We didn’t,” they chorused.

“Well, eyes and teeth, remember?” Davy subsided. “Let’s try this record. I want to work on arm movements. Hand-jiving, Micky, is not playing pat-a-cake and cat’s cradle at the same time, and Mike, neither is it hitch-hiking to freedom.”

“Wish it was,” Mike muttered.

Davy stopped the music. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Mike and Micky said in unison.

“Good.” Davy walked up and down in front of them. “Because I’ve heard every so-called joke about ‘hand-job’, and ‘the clap’ that you can imagine, so we can dispense with those and get to work so you two don’t look like you’re doing semaphore and someone’s stolen your flags, all right?”

“All right,” Mike and Micky mumbled in unison, and any grumble about was Davy confusing dance training with basic training shrivelled on Mike’s lips. He gulped though when the new record Davy started playing had three women cheerfully telling him to “better beware of the happening”.

‘“One day you're up, then you turn around,”’ sang Micky happily, spinning to the left.

“Mike, the other left!” shrieked Davy.

But too late. Mike was indeed finding his world was tumbling down, and with a loud ripping noise.

“Now you’ve done it,” Micky lamented, with an eye on their dance instructor-drill sergeant. “These were the only three matching dresses! Arrggh!” he shrieked as loudly as Davy when the latter approached with a huge pair of scissors. “It was an accident, Davy! Mike didn’t mean to— Oh. Yeah.” He took the scissors from Davy after Davy, no longer demon dance teacher but demon dressmaker of Carnaby Street, had finished cutting the bottom off Mike’s frock to do the same to his own.

With a “the show must go on,” Davy whipped out three needles and thread for them to hem their gowns. He stared at Mike’s lower limbs. “Only one problem…”

“No. Nuh-huh.” Mike felt he’d been saying that a lot over the course of the day. “Ah am not shaving ma legs, guys!” He was surprised at how southern he sounded. He hadn’t had that much to drink, had he?

The “No,” and “Of course not,” that he received in reply eased him enough to drink some brandy, straight from the bottle—he’d finished the contents of the cocktail shaker? Oh—and almost miss Davy holding up a round pot of goo and Micky a small camping stove. “What in the world are they for?” he asked,

He soon found out.

“ _Arrggghhheeowowowglug,_ ” was the noise Mike made when, sitting in an empty hip bath, his legs stuck up in the air and splayed to either side, his bandmates pulled hot strips of wax from them in tandem and Micky filled his mouth with brandy after, like synchronized waxer-inebriators.

Micky wiped his brow. “Ever wondered what a wounded buffalo sounds like when it goes to the watering hole to die?” he asked Davy.

“Nooo…” Davy replied.

“Me neither, but if I had…” Micky pointed an elbow at Mike. “Least it’s solved the problem of how to make him sing in a higher pitch—he’s falsetto now. Let’s get you out,” he said, nodding at Davy to heave Mike up.

“Smooth.” Mike ran a hand down his pantyhose-covered leg. “Shoe.” He looked at the pointed shoe on the end of his leg. “High shoe.”

“Oh, they’re easy to walk in.” Davy demonstrated in his own. “See?”

“Yeah, but can you put a wiggle in your walk?” Micky swung up and down the small room, everything bouncing.

“Ooh, you little _tart_!” Davy dived and yanked Micky’s right shoe off. “You sawed a bit of the heel of one to make you jiggle! The old Marilyn Monroe trick, eh? Well, I’m confiscating those. To wear them myself.”

“No, you need higher ones, to bring you up to our…waists!” Micky protested.

“Can I come in?” came Peter’s voice from the corridor outside.

“No!” shrieked three voices. “We haven’t even done our eyebrows yet!” Davy added.

“I’ve seen you all without makeup before,” Peter reminded them.

“Oh, fine.” Micky let him in where they were both working on Mike, who couldn’t meet Peter’s eyes in the central space of the mirror free of the Christmas cards stuck into the frame all around it.

“You look good,” Peter told him, his smile sunny.

“Oh, thanks!” Mike beamed back. “There’s just one teeny-tiny problem.” He ignored Micky’s, “And he don’t mean Davy!” and Davy’s, “Just the one?”

“What’s that, Michael?” Peter passed him a glass of water.

“I can’t walk in heels!” Mike confided.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prob no updates for the rest of the week as I catch up on work!


	9. Chapter Nine

ll

“Oh, I bet you’re not so bad! You’re probably just being modest,” Peter reasoned, helping Mike from the chair. “Have a try? Ah,” he winced a few seconds later.

“He looks like a new-born foal,” Davy observed.

“Doing the Pony,” Micky added.

“People, please.” Peter shot them a look. “Michael, go barefoot. Well, in stockinged feet.”

“Sexier.” Mike nodded.

“Beckie does, in the group,” Peter explained. “She’s taller—”

“The Mike of the group,” Micky commented.

“And sometimes Tisha, the shorter—”

“Or, the Davy of the group,” Micky added.

“Doesn’t want to wear the really high heels that make her more or less the others’ height, so if she wears more normal shoes, Beckie takes hers off.”

“You know them well,” Mike said, after a pause. “Where d’you meet them?”

“Oh, I met Tisha at a recording session. She was doing back-up vocals in the studio across the corridor from where I was playing keyboards.”

“Piano,” Mike said.

“No—”

“Sorry, piano _forte_.” Mike didn’t know why he was imitating Peter’s accent.

“No—”

“Electric piano, I mean.”

“No—”

“ _Harpsichord!_ ” Mike yelled, startling Davy, who dropped his mascara and cursed.

“No. Michael—”

“Clavichord?” Michael had no idea why this was an issue.

“No.” Peter sighed, resigned.

“Harmonium.” But he was a stubborn SOB.

“No.”

“Not _synthesizer_?” Micky squealed, startling Davy, who dropped his kohl pencil and cursed again. “Man, I’d love me one of those. I started saving, but what with the price of liquid hydrogen—” He clapped his hand over his mouth.

“Clavinet? Spinet?” Mike continued. “Peter, am I hot?”

“Erm, well…” Peter took a look at the others.

“Virginal?” Mike whispered, lowering his head to Peter’s.

“Melodica,” Peter whispered in reply.

“Huh?”

“I was playing the melodica,” Peter whispered back.

“So you were fingering and blowing. That’s…” Mike finished in a knowing nod.

“Here.” Davy knocked the bottle of brandy into Peter’s arm, making the remains slosh.

“I don’t think Michael should have any more,” Peter protested.

“’S’not for him, it’s for you. You’re a few drinks behind,” Davy explained. “You’ll need it for if he gets on to the pipe organ, or, worse yet, the pump organ.”

“Oh!” Mike’s loud exclamation had Davy grabbing tight to the brandy bottle. “’S’just hit me!” Mike continued.

“Okay!”

“No, Micky!” Peter caught the hand Micky had just lifted to Mike.

“But he said! And it’d sober him up…” Micky dropped his pretense under Peter’s unwavering stare.

“What, Michael?” Peter bent down to him, then pulled up a stool next to him.

“Seems to me I’m doing y’ll a favor with this.” Mike pulled at his dress by way of illustration. “Like, Davy needs cash to get to Liverpool—”

“Manchester!” Davy shouted.

“Same thing. And Peter needs money to get to his village—”

“The Village,” Peter corrected.

“And Micky needs money for all the raw materials he’s ordered for that secret rocket he’s building in the garage—”

The other two turned to Micky for him to put Mike right, but Micky, wide-eyed, clapped a hand over Mike’s mouth. Mike shook it off. “But I don’t need the extra dough, so iffen I’m doing this for y’all, y’all owe me.”

“Wow. Is that a record for number of y’alls used in one breath?” Davy inquired.

Peter waved the other two away. “What do you want, Michael?”

“Oh, so much.” Mike heaved out a sigh and sat back, closing his eyes. “Someone special, just for me. Someone I can, oh, I don’t know, hold hands with. Laugh with. Make plans with. _Be_ with. Someone who I feel lucky and honored to have by my side. Someone who supports me and makes me feel as cherished as I’ll make them. Someone who’s loving and caring and my best friend. Oh, and this is important: someone I can make music with.”

He grabbed at something, a lapel, he thought, to bring Peter in to whisper. “Not ‘make beautiful music with’ as a euphemism for sex. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I like sex. And making love. And you know what? I’m _really_ good at both.”

“That’s…good to know,” Peter said, after a pause.

“Yeah,” Mike agreed.

“So you want a relationship.”

Peter’s statement came so long after Mike had finished speaking that he forgot what he’d been talking about. Because he had been talking, hadn’t he? Not just thinking? “ _A relationship,_ ” he repeated, trying the word out on his tongue. “Re-lay-shun-ship. It sounds nice, right?”

“It really does,” Peter agreed.

When Mike opened his eyes, Peter’s caramel-brown ones were looking directly into them. The music that had been playing stopped. The room stopped. It hung, suspended in a bubble and then it spun and Mike bent down and was sick. He didn’t know how much later it was that he was cleaning up at the basin and Peter was protesting to the others that Mike couldn’t perform.

“The show must go on.” Davy was implacable. “Here, Mike. Old showbiz trick. Bite down on this and it’ll stop you vomiting.” He shoved a silver dollar between Mike’s teeth.

How’s that work?” Micky was all agog.

“I dunno. A famous Scottish actor I worked with did it. He used to throw up with stage fright, but with a half crown—two shillings and sixpence—clenched between his teeth, he never honked.” He paused. “Oh wait. I get it now. He was such a skinflint he kept his jaws clamped shut not to risk losing his money!” He laughed.

“Well, money is what this is all about.” Peter sighed and sat to work on the set list.

“Urrggghh. Davy?” Mike asked.

“What now?” Davy’s reply sounded as world weary as the mother of triplets under five.

“How long does a dollar take?”

“To…?”

“ _Work._ ” Mike flicked his gaze downward.

Davy did a double take. “You _swallowed_ it? Oh my sainted aunts.”

“Snakes alive,” Micky threw in.

“Judas priest,” Peter added. “Huh. With Mike incapacitated, we’re stepping into his role,”

“Not into his shoes though,” said Davy, his nose turning up. “Not till they’re cleaned, anyway.”

“It’s only one night,” Mike repeated on the club’s stage later. “Only one night. Clap two-three-four. Turn two-three-four. Shiver—”

“ _Shimmy!_ ” Davy barked from the side of his mouth,

“Two-three-four. Only one night,” Mike repeated, ignoring ogling guys—the ogliest of which was Jim the manager, aka Babbitt’s twin—sniggering Talent Records acts, and frowning Monkees, sorry, Monkettes. “Only one night.”

“Mike,” Peter said, as they raced off stage, “is now a good time to tell you the Blossom girls got delayed and we’re on again tomorrow?”

“What?” Mike’s yell had heads turning. “You mean I have to do this all over again? Didn’t I do it enough the first time?”

“Ooh.” Peter considered those words. “You know, with a little tweaking, those could be lyrics and—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, much less his thought, before Mike threw up again. On Peter’s shoes this time.

***

“It wasn’t bad at all for you, see?” Mike back in the present told Peter. “You got a song out of it. Well, if you ever get it finished…” He ducked Peter’s flick to his ear.

“Yes, and we got to see you drunk. Drunk in charge of a dress…” Peter spoke the last bit from behind the rim of his punch glass.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, Spider.” Mike scowled.

“You looked good! I wasn’t lying when I told you that. You’ve got good legs for a skirt. I liked it. _Liked it_ , liked it.”

“Oh ya did, did ya?” Mike wished they were alone because that shy smile and duck of the head Peter gave made Mike want to throw him down and do bad things to him. He considered this admission. He loved pleasing Peter and God knew Peter indulged him in his sexual fantasies and kinks. “Well now. I guess that’s something we could…see about…”

“What?” Micky, arriving in their midst, red-faced, sweaty-headed and breathless—which Mike hoped was a result of a second session of jumping around like a loon in the inflatable castle and nothing else—demanded. “What you talking about?”

“That tour last year. How awful it was.”

“I liked it!” Davy protested, sidling up.

“You would.” Mike shook his head at him.

“Yeah, you gotta be the only guy in the world who can get a chick when he’s dressed as a chick.” Micky’s voice held amazement and envy.

“You got a date,” Davy pointed out. “Steak and champagne supper, if I recall?”

“What? No, Davy!” Micky wagged a finger. “Steak, _lobster_ and champagne. Yeah, I still get birthday and Christmas cards from Jim the manager.” He blew on his nails and polished them on his gingerbread suit.

“Jim the bloody manager. That old letch. Best you could do?” scorned Davy.

“No one could do as well as you. Always found yourself a nice comfortable bed while I had to sleep in the Monkeemobile and Peter and Micky had to squeeze in that tour van with all those guys?” Mike lamented.

“What? Peter didn— Ow!” Micky hopped around and Peter apologized for standing on his toes.

“We all did well enough for them to keep us on the tour.” Peter was in full peacemaker mode.

“Yeah. And as ourselves. I’ve never been so glad to hand over a wig and earrings in my life.” Mike, who’d avoided a hangover the day after drinking so much the day before by drinking slightly less the day after, remembered the ladies waiting backstage for them after they came off after the second gig.

All three of them had been whistling and clapping, and joking they were losing their place to the Monkettes, cautioning the Monkettes not to muscle in on their record deal at Talent and explaining how they’d slipped off to Vegas so Beckie could marry her boyfriend and they’d enjoyed it so much they’d stayed another night and—

***

“What you done to our dresses?” Leona had squealed.

“Scarper before she sees the shoes,” Davy had advised.

“Guys, the Talent management say the Monkees are welcome on the Festive LA Tour,” Jackie had announced. “And we’re sure glad to have you on board.”

“Aww. That’s lovely, that is.” Davy had beamed. “Like, harmony, brotherhood and all that stuff Peter goes on about.”

“Not exactly. It’s more Micky we’re interested in. No offense,” Elgin had corrected.

“Ooh, my drumming! You detected how I break the rhythm with triplets like jazz drummers do and displace the beats like blues drummers do, right?” Micky had preened.

“No, it ain’t your skills with the sticks as much as your way with a wrench—we need a grease monkey like you to keep the van going!” Jackie had said.

“And girls just wanna have fun,” Tisha had added, with a wink at Peter.

***

Mike, remembering all this, shuddered. “As long as we never ever ever have to even think about the Monkettes ever again,” he said.

“The Monkettes?” Toby turned around. “I wish I’d seen them. They were my first job!”

“Erm…” Mike eventually broke the silence Toby’s words had caused. “I think we’re talking about different things, Toby.”

“No, the girl group. Sort of R&B?” Toby insisted.

“Davy?” Mike asked, jerking his chin at Toby, to receive a tight head shake. “Micky?”

“I’m too scared, Mike!” Micky whispered.

“Can you explain, Toby?” Peter asked, foolishly in Mike’s opinion.

“Well, I suppose what I mean is I got them their first job.” Toby’s blue forehead creased. “When I was _interviewing_ for a job. It’s a bit confusing.”

“Mike, my head’s gonna explode,” Micky whispered. Mike patted him.

“What was the job?” Peter asked her.

“Press officer at Talent Records. Only the man there—”

“Lionel?” Mike asked, his voice a whisper.

“Yeah! Had to leave after he’d talked to me for a while. Just backed away then ran, really quickly. I saw him from the window, weaving in and out of the traffic on Sunset Boulevard. Just after I showed him my portfolio. I explained I didn’t know _Catholic Digest_ wasn’t a religious-gastroenterology journal, not at the time, and that okay, I’d got the wrong meaning of shag when I wrote a piece for _Shag Monthly_.”

“Toby?” whispered Davy.

“It was a trade magazine for carpet fitters. Nothing to do with the dance.”

“Oh.” Davy looked a little better.

“Funny, a similar thing happened with _Boxing News_ magazine. Well, doesn’t it sound as if it’s more about containers than sport? And I wish I’d know what _Popular Mechanics_ was about before I started interviewing the mechanics that people recommended the most throughout Santa Monica, you know?”

“Talent Records?” Peter reminded her.

“Oh, yes, it was a practical test, I suppose. How well I coped? So I just sat down at the man’s desk and started working. It was this time last year, actually. And there was a crisis and I solved it using all my skills!”

“Oh God.” Mike felt faint. “How?”

“First, I answered the phone and took a message. It was hard, because the woman had one of those accents where they miss out syllables and they’re all nasal, like Brooklyn or—”

“Detroit?” asked all four Monkees.

“Maybe? And she said her group—”

“Blossom.”

“Yes!” Toby looked around the four of them. “You’re good at this. Well, her group weren’t available, but they’d lined up a replacement, this new group. So I said okay, took the message, wrote it all down, _and_ I even made up a half-banner—you know, with my graphic arts skills, and how good I am at making mock-ups of things—to stick across the bottom of the poster for the concerts this woman mentioned. _And_ I printed it out and took it in a company car to the first club on the list, the Scotch Mist in—”

“Downtown Fillmore, Ventura County,” came from all four Monkees. Quietly.

“Wow. You could be on a panel game.” Toby gaped. “And the club was hard to find. Well, it would be, right? And you know, after all that, I never heard back from Talent Records? Well, except about them wanting their car back.”

“And the name of this group, or, the name you _thought_ you heard and wrote down.” Mike was a glutton for punishment. “Was—”

“The Monkettes, yes. Funny, sounds a bit like your group name, if you said it in a Michigan accent. Huh. So, Monkee Christmas hug?”

“No—!”

But too late. Toby had flung her arms around the four of them, smearing them all in streaks of violet and indigo and navy.

“Turn that frown upside down, Mike.” Peter nudged him. “You can’t be blue at Christmas!”


	10. Chapter Ten

Back in the pad, Mike made straight for the box of Christmas stuff.

“What’re you looking for?” Peter called over from the sink where he was pouring himself a glass of water.

“That damn poster!” Mike dug a little deeper. The box didn’t only hold decorations, but Christmas souvenirs too. “I remember that sleazy manager guy took it from the display case outside the club and all the acts signed it and gave it to us?”

“Yes…and we had to ditch it.”

“Babe?” Peter’s careful tone struck Mike.

“You don’t remember?”

“Remember…”

“Being sick on it.”

“Ah.” Well, the tour as a whole was a little hazy, and the first two days a lot hazy. “Say, better deal with the Micky bag before he does!” Eager to change the subject, Mike snatched the bag of leftovers from where he’d dumped it on the kitchen table. He patted his stomach to make his Micky meaning clear.

“Oh, we should be okay with these.” Peter took it from him. “He, along with everyone else, wasn’t a big fan of the humus stuffed sweet peppers, reason there were so many left!”

“You like them?”

“And the apricot canapés.” Peter straightened up from storing the food in the icebox and laughed. “Didn’t you think there were a lot of spherical snacks, and just so Amanda could go around saying, ‘Have some balls,’ ‘Look at those big stuffed balls!’ and “Ugh, cheesy balls?’”

The loon had also referred to “spicy balls” Mike recalled. “And her mom, riffing on Vienna sausages! ‘Such tiny wieners,’ ‘Ooh, split wieners,’ and ‘Battered wieners,’” he imitated, in a drawling, posh feminine voice. He shook his head. “What a pair.”

“Careful—you sound like them now,” Peter warned. “I do think that double entendre thing is catching. At least Toby learned something, that when people talk about ‘finger food’, finger is an adjective, not a verb. I don’t know how she could have misunderstood that all her life.”

“Same way she never knew what ‘potluck’ actually meant,” Mike reminded him, not wanting to deal with the images the first provoked.

“That second misunderstanding sort of explains things about her hostessing,” Peter mused.

Mike made his slow way back to the Christmas box, to see if it helped ease free something else stuck in his memory. “What we were saying earlier, about Davy finding chicks to crash with, during that tour,” he began. “And Micky went and got himself mechanic’s privileges of a room in the motels. I slept on my own in the Monkeemobile—”

“Oh, talking of Davy and his chicks, do you remember when I said he was Don Juan and he winked and said ‘I’ve done a lot more than one, mate’?” Peter interrupted.

Yeah, it was funny but, just like when Peter had interrupted Micky earlier, when he’d been on the subject of the tour bus, Peter was deflecting. The piece of paper that Mike needed now as evidence wasn’t in the Christmas box either, but Mike thought he could recall its contents. “That reader’s letter that won a prize in _Penthouse Forum_ …”

“Michael?” Peter gasped.

“About a guy who met a chick because they worked together, and after in the parking lot, he was daydreaming and she nearly ran him over? Then she took him to a bar to make sure he was okay, and they had a few drinks and she took him back to her place?”

“Erm—”

“It had a line in it about how he went to bed drunk with one chick and woke up hungover with two?”

“That—”

“Then he moved in as a lodger, but not because they needed any help with the rent? What they _did_ need was a man about the house…nightly.” Mike stared hard at Peter. “You wrote that letter, right?”

“What? Michael! Why would…you know about that?” Peter blinked.

“Micky told me,” Mike confessed.

“How— Never mind.” Peter shook his head. “I got a hundred bucks for that!”

“The prize was three hundred!” Mike protested.

“I had to split it three ways! And please don’t riff on that.” Peter held up a hand.

“I was about to ask _you_ that,” Mike told him. The sly little— And so, during the tour—

“Let’s just agree that we’ve all got incidents in past that we could…boast of, but don’t?” Peter had his baritone voice on its deep-velvet setting, the one that made Mike shiver, and it took him a second to catch up with Peter’s actual words.

“Don’t you mean things we should live down?” he corrected, just as the image of Peter’s expensive dress shoes, ruined by Mike’s vomit, pushed itself into his mind in a way that made him eye Peter suspiciously.

“You know my motto, Michael, live and let live,” Peter said, his tone halfway between pious and smug.

“I guess. I mean, okay…” Mike still had that feeling he’d missed something.

“Drink some water,” Peter advised, filling a glass for Mike. “Amanda’s Yule Love It punch packed quite a—”

“Punch?” Mike thought he’d beat him to the, well, punch.

“Wallop,” Peter corrected, running the tip of his finger down Mike’s nose, in the way that Mike did to him. He grinned. “I’ll go put a record on.”

Something slow would be nice, Mike thought, realizing they were alone in the pad. Had the other two gotten lucky at the party? It had been mostly neighbors, so not much of a pool for Davy and Micky to fish in, although that l’il biscuit could and did cast his net on any waters. Amanda’s co-workers and bosses had been there too, Mike recalled. Yeah, a nice slow dance together, in the way that he and Peter couldn’t in public, at parties or in clubs. He turned to the jukebox, startled at the tambourine-rattling, bouncy-tempo R&B number booming out.

“And shake two-three-four…” Peter was laughing too much to continue.

With a, “Ya mean chase two-three-four!” Mike bounded after the escaping Peter. “Because when I catch you, Mr. Live and Not Let A Person Live It Down, it’s an ass whoppin’ for you! Bare ass, too, ya hear?”

“We hear,” came Davy and Micky’s voices from the open front door as Mike caught up with Peter at the back of the instrument podium. “And I wish I hadn’t,” Davy added.

“Hey, mind my drumkit!” Micky shouted across. “I sometimes think it’s out of place—is all this kiss-chase why?”

 _No, that’d be because of the quickies we have behind it_ , Mike tried not to think.

 _Michael, careful!_ hissed Peter.

“You’re back early,” they both said, Mike trying to will down the erection that proximity to Peter always caused. “Micky afraid someone’ll get to the leftovers before him?” he added, dodging the suction-cup dart Micky fired from his plastic gun at him in retaliation.

What had they promised, that if Micky got a dart sticking to any one of their foreheads, he could have his choice of TV shows for a whole week, oh and sneaking up on people when they were asleep didn’t count? “Or at yoga or meditating,” Peter added.

“Or using the bathroom for any reason.” Mike nodded.

“And Mr. Schneider doesn’t count,” said Davy, examining himself in the mirror.

“If we’re all in, I’ll lock up.” Mike’s boner had subsided enough for him to come out from behind, oh God, Peter’s organ. _Down, boy._ He checked the side door then crossed to the front. “Davy, you’ll wear that dang mirror out!”

“I’ve got a bite.” Davy twisted his neck.

“It’s too cold for mosquitoes,” Mike said, coming to look, Micky at his heels. “Oh. Not _that_ kind of bite. Right. Any point asking who did it?”

“Not me.” Micky pointed to his teeth. “It’s too even to be mine.”

“I keep telling you to go back to using your retainer,” Mike said, then frowned. “Wait. This conversation is making even less sense than they usually do here.”

“It’s _Christmas_ , Mikey!” carolled Micky, as if that explained things. Well, it kinda did.

He was glad to finish locking up and get washed up for bed, remembering to exit the bathroom slowly and craftily, in case of flying rubber-suckered darts, and lock the bedroom door behind him, just as carefully and securely—although that was for a different, if still Micky-related, reason.

Soft music was playing, the string of Christmas trees lights gleaming sweetly across the headboard—and thankfully not flashing—but no Peter?

“Babe?” he called in the direction of the Non-Suite bathroom, shedding his clothes with relief as he did so. He was burning that ringmaster’s outfit. The whip, he’d keep. “Come on out. I need to see what an angel wears under his robes, see if it’s like what a Scotsman has on under his kilt!”

“Well, I changed out of that costume…” came from the ajar bathroom door, and Mike did a double-take to see Peter’s bare leg sticking out of the gap. He glimpsed a flash of red on Peter’s thigh before Peter came out of the tiny bathroom…wearing one of the tiny red silk Santa gowns the servers had been costumed in earlier, fastened tight to his body with the sash tied in a big bow.

“Been a good boy?” Peter asked. “Good enough to get your Christmas blow-ho-ho job?”

“Well, blow-ho-ho me down.” Mike couldn’t groan at Peter’s awful pun, not when his was equally as bad, and he much preferred to take in the glorious sight advancing toward him. “I’m gonna find out what Santa wears under his tunic. This is not only naughty, it’s shocking!”

“But nice?” Peter stood between Mike’s knees, where he sat on the edge of the bed. 

“Oh yeah,” Mike breathed, smoothing his palm over the bulge Peter’s erection made in the silk fabric. He pulled free the striped candy cane that was pushed under the bow of the sash, the bow that was tied to the left, where Peter wore his belt buckle. He huffed out a laugh. “Funny, I kinda thought Micky’d be the one to help himself to one of those costumes, if anyone, but seeing you in it…” He placed the candy on the nightstand and ran a hand up Peter’s bare thigh.

“Not for long. Betting I won’t be in it for long,” Peter clarified. “Wait. Are you saying you’d prefer Micky in it?” He out his hands on his hips in mock indignation.

“No, sugar. I’m saying I want to see you out of it,” Mike corrected, his fingers giving a slow pull to the sash’s bow. “Is it wrong I’m getting so fucken turned on undressing Santa Claus?” Something occurred to him and he laughed out loud. “Thinking of that song Micky sings at Christmas, the one he made up when he was a kid about when Santa comes…”

“Which won’t be long.” Peter indicated his boner, this pun making Mike groan. “I know the song: ‘I wanna jump on Santa’s sleigh, take off into the sky…’”

“Well, I wanna jump on Santa’s bones and take off his clothes,” Mike admitted.

“Hm, well, ‘what would Santa do’ about that?’” mused Peter.

“He’d better let me have my way with him.” Mike pulled the bow undone, then the sash free and let the gown fall open. “Oh…” He swallowed. “You had to do it, didn’t ya. Had to wear the tight red shorts.” They were in fact _cherry_ red, to make matters…more interesting.

Mike stood and eased Peter back a step so he could walk around him and check out the back view. He loved what tight shorts did to Peter’s ass, hugging it like Mike did. He came back round to admire the front, how the color and size showcased Peter’s upper thighs and hips and how the size and fit cupped Peter’s cock, again like Mike did. He nodded in satisfaction before he sat again.

He pulled Peter over him, slowly, getting in a quick rub of his aching dick against Peter’s on the way, and down to lie on the bed on Mike’s other side.

“You could have just moved over,” Peter suggested.

 _Where’s the fun in that?_ Mike didn’t bother replying, too busy smoothing the silk gown off Peter’s shoulders, but leaving it under Peter, like a frame. “Ya hadda wear ’em,” he breathed.

“I had to, yes. I grew cold,” Peter replied.

“Really? Don’t seem so to me.” Mike smoothed over the good-sized bulge again, with only one layer of material between his palm and Peter’s flesh this time. “But I can warm you up good.” He started by leaning over Peter, to kiss him and rub his chest against Peter’s, figuring his would be warmer, being hairier. And because Peter dug the scrape of the hair across his nipples. He dug Mike’s teeth nibbling at them too, so Mike did that too, on his way to Peter’s hips, where he tapped, for Peter to raise them so Mike could tug the shorts off.

Carefully—Peter was fully erect now.

“Oh, hope I didn’t hurt you none.” Mike was all fake contrition. “No matter—I’ll kiss it better.” He dipped down and took another kiss, unable to resist, before rolling on top of Peter, aligning their bodies. A raised eyebrow had Peter spreading his legs for Mike to settle between them before he deepened the kiss, sweeping his tongue into Peter’s mouth.

Peter gripped his shoulders, moaning into the kiss. Mike realized the minty taste was different to Peter’s usual toothpaste flavor—had he been sucking on that goddamn candy cane? Never mind Santa or an angel—Peter was an _imp_. He’d known Mike would realize and imagine the sight and demand he did it again, for Mike. He nibbled on Peter’s tongue.

Peter rocking his hips in response had Mike thrusting, rubbing his cock over Peter’s, which in turn had Peter arching and tipping his head back with a gasp, exposing that strong throat and neck Mike loved. Hell, he loved all the parts, and Peter as a whole, and much more than the sum of his parts.

He rewarded Peter with a nip at his turned-up chin, then a stronger bite where his neck met his shoulder. The heavier, quicker beat of Peter’s heart under his at this had Mike’s hips bucking, knowing how he aroused Peter. The much harder, more definite buck of Peter’s hips told Mike what Peter needed, but, hiding his sly grin, he took his time licking and sucking Peter’s nipples instead.

“ _Michael!_ ” Peter tugged at his hair.

“Somethin’ you need, sugar?”

“Yeah. I want to suck you.”

Oh, his darlin’ was always catching him wrong-footed. “But I promised you a blow job.” Mike ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, catching the remnants of the sugary-sweet peppermint candy taste. “So I guess there’s only one thing for it.”

“Fingers?” came from Peter.

“All in good time, darlin’.” Mike booped his nose.

“Wrasslin’?”

Was that supposed to be him? Mike cupped a warning hand to Peter’s balls that he wouldn’t tolerate cheek and Peter squirmed, nicely, heated and tightening in his palm. “No. Something a little more mellow.”

Hoping Peter wouldn’t guess what he was about until he’d done it, Mike pulled quickly away, onto his side, then turned around, lining up his throbbing cock with Peter’s kiss-swollen lips. “Open for me. Got somethin’ better for you to suck on than any stick o’Christmas candy…”


	11. Chapter Eleven

Peter, of course, did more than just obediently open his mouth. He rolled Mike’s hips enough to raise his top leg, giving Peter room to circle one hand over his hip and one around his upper thigh, from below. One he had Mike where he wanted him, he palmed Mike’s ass cheeks, then slid his fingers down his cleft. His speed and sureness sent a shiver through Mike, making his fingers tremble where he went to stroke Peter’s balls and work his cock. Peter’s dick flexed, making Mike smile as he tongued the slit, lapping at the pre-cum leaking from it.

That this made Peter moan, when his mouth was just starting to settle on Mike’s cock, made Mike want to up the ante. He gave a squeeze to Peter’s balls, judging the perfect not-too-gentle, not-too-commanding pressure with the ease of practice, and sucked the tip of Peter’s dick into his mouth. He remembered telling Peter, before they’d had sex for the first time, that taking Peter’s dick would be a challenge, with him being so thick and long. And it had been, but one Mike got off on—he dug taking Peter’s cock, having Peter fuck his ass, and grooved on feeling it, feeling _him_ , for hours after.

He’d be ashamed to admit he rationed how often he bottomed so he tightened up between times, making Peter have to forge his way in each time…and making each time feel kind of like the first time. Yeah, he be ashamed to own up to that, but there was no need—Peter knew, and would never call him out on it. In gratitude, Mike put a flutter into the flat of his tongue and rippled it harder to that patch just under the glans that drove guys crazy, Peter being no exception. Mike hummed a little, to add vibration too, and because his love of Peter’s cock extended to giving him head

Then it was his turn to react…at the warm, wet stroke around his hole, Peter running his wetted finger around the rim in that light, teasing way that created a heavy, real need. In retaliation, Mike took Peter’s shaft deep, quick and sudden, his tongue tip tracing that beating vein all the way to the base. And once Mike was there, tongue, lips and all, he stayed there, deep and long enough to make Peter whimper. He fought against his own whine that wanted to break free when Peter, who’d stilled for a moment in reaction to Mike deep throating him, went back to working the head of Mike’s shaft and stroking over his hole, rubbing with two fingers now.

Mike tried to stay still, to remain in control, but pressed back, breaching himself on Peter’s hand, wanting more. He sucked Peter again and swallowed around the tip. He was proud of that move and it always got a good reaction. Peter reciprocated by sliding his lips a half-inch down the head of Mike’s cock, mouthing that ridge just under the crown, and sliding two fingers into his channel.

 _Ohhh._ It had been over a week since he’d taken a dick in his ass, and Mike clenched, part natural reaction to the penetration and part wanting to feel more. Peter must have been mind-fucking him at the same time as starting to ass-fuck him, because Mike swore he could _see_ as well as feel Peter’s girth spreading him open, filling him until he couldn’t take another inch—then making him take more, like he did to Peter…who fucken loved it as much as Mike did.

 _No._ He wanted to bring Peter off first, wanted to make him to lose control and come undone for him. Yeah, he wanted that more than he needed Peter’s dick in him…at that moment. Plenty of time for that later, when Peter’d recovered enough. Sneakily, Mike trailed one finger back and rubbed over the soft skin behind Peter’s balls, massaging that sweet spot while taking Peter deep again, curious what Peter would do. Peter lost his rhythm under the onslaught of sensations, letting Mike’s cock slip from his lips. He mouthed at Mike’s balls, an easier target, instead. Mike wasn’t that into ball play but liked whatever Peter chose to do to him

What Peter chose to do then, in their unspoken competition, was ease another finger into Mike, and Mike’s moan was low and guttural as he rode the wave of heated pleasure spreading from his ass to sizzle along most of his nerve endings. He’d just about processed that, could breathe again, when Peter rubbed over his prostate. The bedroom and all its pretty lights whited out, and Mike saw stars in the pearl-gray haze.

His dick pulsed. No, jerked, if he were being honest, and more violently than Peter’s had minutes before when Mike had caught him by surprise, starting this playtime, this game. “Pete.” His voice came out as a scrape, so he cleared his throat. “ _Peter._ ” If that little devil pretended he couldn’t hear him… Another tiny, sly stroke over that devastating spot deep in Mike forced the breath from his lungs. “Gonna come ifyou keepthatup,” he confessed on a shaky gasp.

Peter’s response was to suck Mike’s cock down to the root while blatantly massaging his gland…and Mike didn’t stand a chance. His orgasm raged through him like a storm, loud as thunder and electric as lightning. Peter’s cock slipped from Mike’s mouth when Mike had to open it in what he hoped was a soundless scream to let out the pressure banking in him. He managed to keep his hands in play, and worked Peter in long, demanding strokes that pulled his release from him in seconds, and brought him to a noisier climax than Mike’s, to Mike’s secret, shaming pleasure.

He shifted so most of Peter’s cum jetted onto Peter’s stomach and lower chest, each spurt mirrored in what Peter was milking from him, and that unity, that oneness intensified Mike’s own orgasm, wringing him out so his arms shook, where they held Peter and his legs shook, where Peter held him. When Peter let him go, he slipped from his side onto his back, panting, but pressing close to Peter, to prolong their contact. He hated being apart from him, losing the warmth and thrum of Peter’s body.

It gratified him that Peter’s panted breaths were as loud as his own. He’d done that, had wrecked Peter—just like Peter had him…and just like Mike was already planning to do to Peter again, before the night was out.

As soon as his heartrate slowed and his limbs were under his command again, he sat, swinging around and sending the damp-haired, pink-faced, sweat-shiny, shipwrecked-looking Peter a quick grin before he eased himself to the floor to make for the bathroom, where even the quickest glance in the mirror showed him a Mike looking as fucked-out as Peter. He shrugged and made his way back to the bed, where he held up the damp washcloth. “C’m’ere. Let’s clean ya up, tiger.”

“ _Tiger?_ ” Peter pulled the pillow under his head to see himself better. He dabbed a finger in the cooling cum on his torso. “Because…I’m striped?”

“Oh, I don’t know why I said it. It just slipped out.” Mike ducked his head, applying himself to his self-appointed clean-up task.

“Hm. Call _me_ tiger, when you’re the one who pounces on me!” Peter tipped his head back to study Mike, who felt like a specimen under a microscope, more so when Peter gave _that_ smile, the one far removed from his sunny beam, where his dimple didn’t flash, but his button mole had a shrewd twist to it. “You love coming on me.”

Playing coy wouldn’t cut it, so Mike rolled with it. “I sure do, sugar. Oh, I’m a bad, bad man.” He made his admission into a boast by picking up Peter’s foot, to give the big toe a sudden nip, and loved the surprised giggle and helpless writhe his words and actions pulled from Peter.

“You really are,” Peter murmured, as he moved so they could arrange themselves to get settled. He opened one eye. “I can feel you plotting, behind me there.”

“’S’that right?” Mike spooned close, easing Peter’s bent knees up to move his own into the space. They might start off in this position, but if Mike woke a few hours later, Peter would have one of Mike’s arms between his, and Mike would be holding both of his hands and have one leg between Peter’s, their feet tangled.

“Um. You’re waiting for me to fall asleep then ravage me.”

“ _Ravage?_ Shouldn’t that be ravish?” Mike wondered. Peter was smart with words—maybe Mike had misunderstood the word so far. Wouldn’t be the first one.

“No, not with what you do to me,” Peter volleyed back. His chest moved with his huff of laughter at his own joke before he angled his head over his shoulder to kiss Mike in recompense. “You ravish too. But admit it, you’re planning to fuck me.”

“Big bad me and l’il ol’ defenseless you?” Mike stopped his riff to pull his head out of the way of Peter’s as it moved back with the giant yawn Peter gave. “Aw, you’re tired, babe.”

“The wine in that punch knocked me out. Think that’s why they call it punch?”

Mike groaned and squeezed the arm he had thrown around Peter. “Babe?” he asked, seeing Peter’s forehead crease in thought.

“I’m trying to count. Because of the rule…”

“Rule— Oh!” Mike easily guessed which one. ‘“You have permission to wake me if I’m asleep and you’re feeling horny, up to a twice-a-week limit.’” he quoted.

The raised eyebrow Peter turned on him said Mike pushed the quota. “It goes both ways, shotgun,” he reminded Peter, who could be pushy when he wanted to be.

“Like us,” Peter replied, quick as a flash.

“I fucken love you,” burst from Mike.

“You’d better.” Peter turned and rearranged them so he was on his back and hugging Mike to him, Mike’s head on his chest and Mike’s legs intertwined with his. “Because I fucken love you too,” came as he nuzzled into Mike’s hair.

It meant Mike went to sleep with a smile on his face, just as waking before Peter, to arouse him as he slept, making him wake up so goddamn horny he _begged_ Mike to fuck him hard and fast, right then and there, kept the smile there the next morning. Even though it was his turn to cook a Christmas breakfast…and the day for decorating the tree…

“Mike, hurry up!” Micky called from the tree to him. “I’m saving you space for your bit, but the others are pressing in on you!” He indicated the bare, still unadorned section of tree.

“Reckon you got your subjects in a twist there,” Mike replied, prepared to bet that if the other two had left Mike some branches to deck out, it was Micky’s baubles and ornaments that were encroaching on them. “Why don’t you do it for me? Iffen you want your breakfast afore lunchtime…”

“Because we all do a quarter!”

They did, and the resulting competing styles and clashing approaches was…something.

“Wait.” Micky left his post and came over. “You’ve gone extra-Tex…does that mean we’re getting green chile pork posole?”

“For breakfast? Think it’s Easter, boy?” Mike scoffed.

“A mass o’black-eyed peas?”

“It ain’t New Year’s Day, either!”

“Tamale breakfast casserole, then!”

“And whose birthday is it?” Mike scorned, although fairly impressed at Micky’s knowledge of down-home cooking, a legacy of being to stay with his Texan grandmother, or various cousins, during parts of his childhood. “Mick, you’re watching me mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar…” He turned on the Sunbeam Mixmaster to blend them, having borrowed it from Mrs. Homer for the morning. “And I got the wet ingredients here.” He measured out the milk and chopped the butter. “So what do you think I’m making?”

“ _Biscuits!_ ” Micky yelled.

“Cookies, you mean?” Davy came over. “Or you gone English for Christmas?”

“No, Texas biscuits! Big fluffy doughy things, remember?” Micky shaped his hands into a ball to show him.

“Oh, those imitation scones.” Nose turned up, Davy wandered back to the tree.

“And cookies, too,” Mike called. Him wanting to make large quantities of different goodies was the reason for the electric mixer. Mike agreed with the ads that said clever cooks let their Mixmaster do the work. “To hang on the tree. If they get that far…”

Micky, understanding from Mike’s words that he was judged a likely interceptor of cookies, held a hand to his chest in pretend shock.

“Honey?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, sugar?” Micky answered before Mike could.

“No, I’m really asking if Mike’s making honey biscuits.”

If Mike hadn’t been, the imploring face Peter turned up to him from where he was kneeling at the base of the tree would have had Mike whipping up a batch. He nodded. “Yeah, doing some with honey—just for you.” He pointed a spoon at Micky in warning. “Go do the top of the tree, then as soon as these are in, I’ll come do my section. Deal?”

Nodding like his head was on springs, Micky returned to work, and when Mike glanced over in between hitting the mass of dough with a rolling pin, and turning it and folding it in half every few whacks—his family’s trick got the lightest biscuits ever—the other three were dressing the chimp in its mini Santa suit, and forming a human ladder to place him on the top of the tree.

By the time Mike had cut out rounds, pressing a glass down into his rolled-out dough in lieu of a proper cutter, they others were decking out Mr. Schneider in his matching Father Christmas costume and sitting him under the tree. Mike brushed a third of the biscuits with honey butter and pushed the baking sheet into the oven. “You left me any ornaments?” he asked, coming over to see the much-less-than-one-quarter of tree left for him. “And when we hang the gingerbread cookies on, I want them to stay on the tree, and not hear Mr. Schneider ate them—”

“Or that Christmas burglars broke in,” Peter added.

“Or that there was a Christmas ghost,” Davy said. “Again.”

Mike hid a smile. He was planning on making a huge heap of cookie dough so he could always bake more. Just as he could deny Peter nothing, he couldn’t say no to Micky. Peter caught his eye, his look reproving. He was less indulgent than Mike was with the others, in some ways. “I guess we can have a couple for after dinner,” Mike coaxed.

“Biscuits for breakfast and cookies for dinner!” Peter tutted.

“Yeah, it’s a little much.” Mike strung tinsel around his boughs. “We gotta do some exercise today, right?”

“Okay,” Micky agreed.

“Careful, Mick! It could be a trap.” Davy spoke with the wariness of the youngest child, tricked into doing things. “What kind?” he asked.

“The best kind!” Mike stood, ignoring the dirty-sounding chuckles from the younger two. “Cleaning.” He also ignored their groans. “Oh, come on! We haven’t done a deep clean since July, and I did most of it!”

“Ahem,” came from Davy.

“You hid and read a magazine,” Mike protested.

“Yeah? Which one?” Davy stood too, folded-armed.

“What? I don’t know, man!” Mike admitted.

With an, “I rest my case,” Davy went to make tea.

“But you’re all gonna pitch in, right?” Mike felt the moment that he thought he’d seized slipping like sand through his fingers. “Guys, come on! You know it’s the day neighbors call around with Christmas cards and we give them ours!”

“I made all the cards,” Micky assured him.

“I know. I cleaned up all the glitter and glue. Every damn day,” Mike muttered.

“And I’ve been making tree ornaments to give to everyone, out of scrap metal. They’re outtasite!” Micky boasted.

“Yeah, they are, ’cause we make you do it in the garage,” Davy crowed.

“But…” Mike looked at the smeared windows, the stained floors, the evidence of Micky’s homemade popcorn bunting. _Dyed_ festive colors homemade popcorn bunting.

“Now, don’t get stressed, Mikey.” Micky patted his shoulder. “We don’t a repeat of that first Christmas here in the pad, two years ago, do we?”


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Christmas Eve 1964**

“Micky!” Mike directed his voice towards the open front door of the pad, wincing and lowering his volume when his shout reverberated inside his hollowed-out, dried-out and yet thick-feeling skull. “I know it’s Christmas Eve Day, but there’s chores a’needing doing here, pard’ner!” Calling Micky partner was the latest way he was trying to instil responsibility in the kid. “Oh, actually, not ‘but’—because of!”

A sound came from inside the pad, some reply he couldn’t catch, maybe. “Sorry to lay it all on you,” Mike called. He didn’t like playing the heavy and was making an effort not to, to try to let things between the four of them fall into their own shape, and not get hung up when it wasn’t exactly the one he’d envisioned and sketched out. Even if it wore the enamel from his teeth from gritting them, and ate away at his stomach lining from the acid, and made his head throb from the tension. Oh no, wait. The last two were due to the wine.

“Not my fault there were four bottles,” Mike muttered to a not-there Micky. “ _You_ got us the dang hamper, boy.” The drawings and names on the bottles—Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the other one—had been so strange and inviting…and they’d all four of them answered the call. All four inhabitants of the pad, that was. Even though the younger ones were, well, younger, as in young, as in underage…for drinking.

Micky especially, as they’d seen when, instructed to eat something to blot up the alcohol, he’d grabbed a cracker and spread some soft cheese on it…only to discover, on biting into it, it was a small round cork drinks coaster…and then eaten the whole thing anyway. Declaring how groovy it tasted, he’d followed it up with a raffia placemat.

“’S a coaster, not a chaser!” Davy had cried, tears of mirth streaming.

“You mean an appetizer—he ate it first,” Peter had corrected, making Davy laugh so much his stomach had ached.

“’E’s blotto,” he’d declared, the table shaking with his laughter. At Mike’s, “Huh?” he’d added, “He’s Smashed. Hammered. Plastered.”

“Huh again? ’Cause he sure ain’t doing home repairs,” Mike had said. “Wish he would. Wish any’o’ya would. In fact, I got the trowel and the gypsum r—”

“Rat-arsed. Bladdered. Mashed,” Davy tried to explain.

“You know, you can tell a lot about a place’s culture by what topic they have a lot of words for. Like Eskimos have over a hundred words for snow,” Peter had commented.

“And Texas got hundreds of words for oil!” Micky shouted. “Texas tea, black gold…”

“Now, don’t get crude!” Peter admonished, making Mike laugh. “Michael, Davy’s saying Micky can’t hold his drink.”

“’E was ’olding _mine_ at one point earlier!” Davy said.

“To help you, Davy! I feel sorry for you ’cause you gotta use both hands!” Micky protested, miming holding what looked like a bowl the size of a trough.

With a, “You saying I’ve got small…hands?” Davy was on his feet.

Micky shrugged. Well, tried to. It looked more like someone had seen an episode of _Hubbub_ on a TV set that had bad, crackly reception and, inspired, was trying to invent a dance called The Slug. Or The Ripple. “If the glove fiiiiii-ooohheegh.”

“Oh, good Lord!” Mike had cried, jumping to his feet as Micky, head down, had vomited. “Micky! Didn’t I say not to drink alcohol? But you begged and you wheedled and—”

“Oh, Michael. Don’t be so sq— Don’t say that,” Peter had said, getting up to help Micky.

Mike glared. He knew what adjective Peter had been about to use to admonish him.

“In Europe, kids drink wine with meals from childhood,” Peter had continued.

“Think this is Europe?” Mike had scorned. “You see the Castle of London out the window? Or the Berlin wall? Or the Tower of Pizza?”

“There’s a tower of _pizza_?” Micky had straightened up, his eyes huge. “Man, I gotta get me to Europe!”

Right there and then, they’d discovered he’d meant. And dressed as an explorer, in baggy khaki shorts, knee socks and a pith helmet, and carrying a carpet bag that held a crazy amount of stuff, as they’d found when unpacking it.

“Water wings? A blow-up lilo? _And a rubber dingy?_ ” Davy had pulled the last one free with a _pop_ that almost had him on the floor. “You fucking Mary Poppins?” he’d groused to Micky, now lying down and who’d removed the wet towel from his face to reply, “I _wish_.”

“Yeah, me too.” Davy had let his crotch thrust illustrate his meaning of his words. “’Cause that Julie Andrews? Top bird, mate. I bloody would.”

“Why, David Jones, she’s old enough to be your— _Mother!_ ” Micky had abandoned his old-lady voice and dived for the phone…before it had rung. He picked up mid-first-ring. “Hi, Mom.”

“’S’really his mum!” Davy’d wandered over to listen. “You know, there’s something weird about that kid.”

Mike pulled a folding picnic chair and a folding camp bed, neither of which he’d known they’d had, out of Micky’s bag. “I guess?” he’d replied, weakly.

“Don’t get hung up on it. His groove’s where’s it’s at, for him,” Peter had said, trying to twist his legs into a knot.

“His bag, you mean! Like the joke, Gladstone bag? No, it’s mine!” Davy had slapped his leg. “Here, got another Christmas riddle for you. Why didn’t the turkey want anything to eat at Christmas?”

 _Because it was already stuffed_ , Mike remembered. He also remembered Micky trying to be coherent on the phone to his family—it had kickstarted the guilt that was now attaching itself to the dehydration inside him for them to amass into one big ball called _hangover_.

Mike peeped into the garage, then blotted his forehead with a sheet of wiping paper from the roll there, although the day was far from warm. Just that _he_ was working up a sweat. Well, okay, more that some stuff he thought he’d glimpsed in the darker corners of the space was making him break out in one. But he clapped a hand over his mouth rather than yell for Micky to _get in here and explain, if you can and_ —

No. He wouldn’t be a drag, much less a square. Mike focused on tidying and sweeping near the front door instead. He took a gulp of water and when he set the glass down on the mail table, he felt the thump in his head.

“Guys, I’m always telling whoever’s on mail duty not to just screw up junk mail and drop it on the ground!” he called inside. Yeah, that was a little heavy of him, to blurt it out like that. It was Christmas. He should raise it in the next house meeting, post-Christmas. There. That was his one gripe out of the way. Now he’d be calm. And merry. And bright. He swept up the litter and took a deep breath, hoping for seasonal cheer to fill his lungs, and got a nose full of the ham he had baking. Yeah, that’d do. For them and their guests.

Well, it’d be quicker if he tidied up out here himself, and got these signs put away before guests arrived. How in the world had they acquired these placards, anyway? Micky, Mike answered himself. _Duh._ Okay, some were funny. The small metallic _LADIES BATHING_ one, more hopeful than accurate, and that had never worked to entice chicks to the pad, had to go. Visitors wouldn’t like to see it, even with one of the strings of tinsel hung across the outside wall making a wavy line across its top.

Huh? How was the sign attached? He couldn’t see any screws to remove. Was it glued? To a plaster wall? How? Oh well. He draped more tinsel across it to hide it. The next one said _Abandon hope all ye who enter here_ and Peter had changed _Abandon_ to _Embrace_. That should stay. Movement glimpsed through the upstairs bedroom window had Mike tilting back to look in.

“You okay? You ain’t moping?” he couldn’t help asking. It was Micky’s first Christmas away, not spent with his family. He’d insisted on showing solidarity to the other three, who were unable to go home, and staying with them. _One_ of the reasons Mike felt a little guilty and a lot pressured to make sure everything today and tomorrow was good. _Groovy_ , he corrected himself. _Loosen up. Get with the hip, Michael._

“S’okay. I’m keeping him mellow and treating his hangover,” Peter answered, popping up just when Mike was thinking about him, a huge smile on his face.

“Good. No, groovy.” Should he add _man_ on the end? Pondering, he went inside to finish making the potato salad tricked up with herbs and cream that he planned to offer guests, to go with the sliced ham and fancy bread rolls and butter at their Christmas Eve Day open house, or at-home or coffee-morning, whatever they called it here when neighbors dropped by to wish them well for the holiday, like they did back home. Oh, coffee. They still had most of the fancy stuff from the tin in that hamper, so that was fine to provide as a beverage, to go along with the sugar biscuits they had left.

He was trying to give all four of them a taste of home, even if he had no idea how to cook that fruit pudding thing Davy was looking forward to, but he’d try tomorrow, to have with the turkey, the last of the hamper, on the day itself. But that was tomorrow and today there was just time to tidy the kitchen and den before anyone arrived. Although he’d said to come before now, whenever he’d mentioned this to any neighbor he’d gotten into conversation with, and in the little notes he’d slipped through people’s letterboxes when no one had answered his knocks.

At least now he wouldn’t have to heave the mattress or even mattresses from the den floor to clear a space in the day. No, not with them all having one each, in rooms that were demarcated sleeping areas. Okay, three mattresses and a pull-out cot, but it was still better than when all they’d had was Peter’s old mattress from the back of his car, laid down for all four of them to top and tail on, on the den floor. It just occurred to Mike that they could actually have put the mattress in a bedroom, slept there. Huh.

Yeah, they were furnishing the pad bit by bit and they even had one bed frame now! How was it that Davy had gotten it again? Mike looked for him to ask him, but he must be upstairs too. Phew, that earthy, herbal smell from the incense they must be burning in the top bedroom hung heavy around the landing and even the spiral stairs.

As if Mike’s thoughts had power, the upstairs bedroom door burst open and Davy hurtled down the stairs, throwing himself into his room, chased by the others hot on his heels and nearly caught by Micky, who slid down the bannister.

“What in the world…?” Mike asked, nearly sent flying by Micky’s dismount. The tinsel and paper chains wafted in Davy’s wake, and the balloons bobbed and swayed as Micky and Peter flew by.

“They’re after me goodies!” Davy squealed from inside his room. He appeared in the doorway, his hands full. “They want a nibble on me selection box!”

“They wanna raid your candy?” Mike tried to decipher Davy’s accusation against the others, aided by Davy’s speed and the colorful packets he was clutching to his chest. “The treats your sisters sent you from England, and that you were saving until Christmas Day?” Okay, yeah, Davy’s lack of willpower wasn’t the issue. Mike tried to get between Davy and Micky’s grabby hands. “Guys—”

“It’s for his own good, Mikey!” Micky said. “Just look at it!” He snatched a rectangular packet of candies and threw them to Mike and Peter, who was jammed in next to him. “See?”

“Not me Spangles!” Davy cried, trying to get his candy back.

“Read it!” Micky urged.

‘“Assorted Spangles,”’ Mike read the candy name from the packaging.

“The slogan?”

‘“Sweet way to go gay’? Is this real?” Peter collapsed into laughter.

“What are your sisters trying to tell you?” Micky gasped. “And the other ones are crazy too!” Micky plucked another packet free of Davy’s fingers, easy as Davy was giggling too. The three of them were hysterical.

“Old English Spangles.” Mike tried to get into the groove. “Like, traditional flavors?” He sniffed the packet of ‘sweets’, recognizing aniseed and mint. “It says, ‘Double wrapped to keep all the flavour in and all the dirt out’. Well, as slogans go, that’s—”

“Cracked like paving stone, man! How polluted is England?” Peter asked, through his sniggers.

“They must be _filthy_ there!” Micky nodded at Peter, who had to throw an arm around Mike’s shoulders to stay upright, he was laughing so much.

“’Cause I’ve never had a problem with dirt getting into candy!” Peter spluttered.

“Think that’s bizarre? Then this’ll really do your noggins in!” Davy declared, holding up a tablet of chocolate to show them its drawing of five young blond boys in historical costume. “Edwardian,” he said, perhaps because Mike’s forehead was creased. It was the same little boy, Mike realized, depicted with five different and very weird expressions.

‘“Desperation.’” Mike read the caption under the first. The boy’s face was frightening. ‘“Pacification.”’ Kid was crying. ‘“Expectation.”’ Kid looked like he had a knife under his cloak. ‘“Acclamation.”’ That he wasn’t afraid to use. ‘“Realisation?”’

“That it’s Fry’s chocolate,” Davy explained of the final image with the kid who had a huge brown something jammed between his teeth and a crazed glint in his eye. “And the chocolate bar’s called…F-Five Boys!” He could hardly speak for guffawing, just as Mike couldn’t be heard over the three of them having their fits.

Their almost unhinged mirth, and the way all three were grabbing Davy’s chocolate bar, to break pieces off and cram into their mouths, looking uncannily like the blond kid on the wrapper, made Mike laugh too. And, just as all four of them were leaning against the door frame, the wall, and Mike—in Peter’s case—still giggling, was when the front door pushed open and a guy came in.

Micky screeched and pointed—the blond, smooth-faced stranger looked as though the boy off the chocolate paper had grown up and come into the pad, presumably as their first guest to their open house. Mike slapped Micky’s hand down.

“Right on! Righteous, in fact!” The guy had gotten tangled up in the tinsel garland Micky had strung across the front door frame, and wore the glittery string like a halo. He giggled too and copied Micky’s gesture, pointing at all of them. “I kinda just moved into the neighborhood? I don’t get out much, but today I came out and …just followed my nose.” He laughed again.

“Howdy, neighbor!” Mike frowned at the others to get them to sober up. “You got a name there, sir?”

“Oh yeah.” The guy nodded.

“And…?” He seemed a little vacant or baffled, so Mike started small. “I’m Mike, this is Peter, Davy and Micky. We’re—” About to continue, “The Monkees,” from force of habit, he stopped himself. Guy looked confused enough. “Pleased to welcome you,” he finished, happy when the others copied him in saying words of greeting and shaking hands with the newcomer.

“And you would be…?” Mike knew you sometimes had to be more direct to get to the point.

“Oh, a whole lot of things. Oh, man! But my name’s Nyles Brown.” Their new neighbor giggled again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a look at the old packaging for the English sweets Davy has - it's bonkers!


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“You just moved in? Here, Beechwood Drive?” Mike asked.

“Just along there.” Nyles pointed…out to sea. Mike presumed he’d gotten turned around, but…

“You met any other neighbors?” Micky asked, his face red with him suppressing giggles.

“I had a few calling.”

“To welcome you?” Mike indicated the way to the chairs, inviting Nyles to take a seat, and Nyles stared at Mike’s hand.

“To warn me,” Nyles corrected, replicating Mike’s hand gesture. “To be careful of the long-haired weirdos at 1334 with their loud music and late nights and loose women, so naturally, I hadda check out all those _L_ s.”

“Yeah— What?” Mike did a double-take.

“Yeah! And to say…hi?”

“Hi,” confirmed the other three, nodding as if in answer to a question the guy had asked, making Mike stared from their visitor to his bandmates in confusion.

“Ah.” Nyles studied him. “You come down for Christmas?”

“N-no…no, I live here?” Mike replied.

“Oh, man!” Nyles bent double, guffawing. “ _Live here!_ Good one.”

Mike looked at the others for help and saw Peter nodding _yes_ at Nyles.

“No need, brother!” Nyles pulled a small silver square from his pocket and unwrapped what turned out to be tinfoil from what looked like a thick slice of cake. “Always got the goodies. See? Here.”

“I…” Mike tried to convey that he didn’t really want to consume the piece of dense-looking slab cake Nyles was offering, but when Nyles mimed eating and smiling broadly and the others crowded close, he felt he should.

And wished he hadn’t. It was like eating twigs or leaves or buds or something, as if the ingredients hadn’t been mixed properly, and tasted smoky and herbal, somehow “Well, thanks. It’s… You make it?” he asked.

Nyles giggled. “Oh yeah.” He handed the foil to Peter, who licked a finger, pressed it in and dug out the crumbs to shove in his mouth. “Best local ingredients. Never leave home without it. Never know when you need it, huh?”

“Well, thanks. You didn’t have to.” Mike took the tinfoil back before Peter could lick it, his pink tongue peeking out, and folded it so Nyles could reuse it. “It should be us bringing a welcome gift to a newcomer.”

Either the folded-small foil or Mike’s words set Nyles off laughing, then he clicked his fingers. “Oh.” He patted his pockets. “I was supposed to give you this. I knew there was something. Got the wrong pocket.”

“Or…the right one. Even though it was the left,” Peter said.

Nyles winked, patted the top of his head, then Peter’s. “Head to head. I dig.” He handed the folded piece of paper to Mike. It had Nyles’ name on it and what Mike assumed was his address. But it was for them?

“Yeah.” Nyles pushed the paper into Mike’s fingers. “’S’a note in a note. Like a Matryoshka doll! But don’t think about that too long or it’ll blow your mind, man!” he advised.

“Erm…” Mike opened the piece of paper and just caught the twenty-dollar bill inside it before it wafted to the floor. He shot a look over each shoulder at the other two reading over them and made space for Davy to get in front of him. Davy’s hand grabbed his to lower the small sheet of notepaper to Davy-eye-level.

‘“Nyles Brown might not leave his house much for a while so could you please pass by twice a week to check on him, perhaps midweek and weekends? Sincere thanks, Mary,’” Mike read.

“ _Mary_ Mary,” Nyles added, as if to explain.

“Well, iffen you don’t get out much, then we’re very glad you came here.” Mike re-folded the note. “And of course we’re happy to call by. Right, guys?” They were nodding happily, their eyes on the twenty bucks. Which Mike tucked back inside the sheet of paper. “Because it’s neighborly. What neighbors do.” He handed the note back to Nyles, pressing his heel warningly down on Micky’s toes when he whined a little and his hand came up as if to fillet the money from the paper.

Sure, they could use the cash. Their kitty would be purring if they added that to it, but that wasn’t how things worked. Particularly if they were dealing with someone with shell shock, which Mike kinda thought their guest had. Oh, they didn’t call it that now. _Combat fatigue._ And what had Mike read the other month in a magazine— _battle neurosis?_ Yeah, Nyles sure had that unfocused stare…

And yet he didn’t think Mary Mary was his nurse or his mother. The longing and loss on his face when he’d said her name… Mike betted there was a story there. Had she left him for a clearer-thinking man? Mike kinda wanted to…fill in the gaps himself. He stopped himself looking for his lyrics notebook.

“You…seen some stuff, huh?” he murmured to their neighbor. “Bet you been to the edge and back.”

“And beyond, man!” Nyles gestured in a circle, somehow managing to convey outer space.

“Yea, real space case,” Mike heard muttered behind him. He turned to frown at however’d said it, using even newer jargon that Mike had read, and Nyles pulled his coat tighter around him and jerked his chin at the door.

“I gotta make like a cosmonaut.”

He was at the door before Mike understood he was saying he was leaving. _And jet_ , would perhaps be the missing bit of the phrase. “Well, bye,” he said to Nyles. “We’ll stop by.”

“Nice rhyme,” Peter commented, filling the rest of the doorway space beside Mike. Wow, he stood close. As close as he had a few minutes ago when he’d been using Mike as a support to keep himself upright.

“Oh, got you a gift for the outside,” Nyles said.

“Oh? like a plant or a lawn ornament or…or a sign saying… _Keep Off The Grass._ ” It was the biggest placard yet and leaned against the wall, just near the door, yet dominated the driveway. “That’s…kind?” Mike tried.

“Kind? It’s a total _gas_ , man!” Peter declared.

“I could tell just from looking at the pad that you’re a kick on irony!” Nyles faced the street. “Now, just gotta find my house…” He set off…in the opposite direction to the number that had been written on the note.

“Pretty sure it’s not that one,” Peter commented, watching Nyles walk inside the garden of the house two doors down.

The outside air must have been chilly, or strong—Mike felt his head start to spin. Or swim. Whichever one where things felt syrupy. Now swim so much as sink, maybe? It did feel heavier than usual. He took a long look down the empty street and walked slowly back into the mostly empty pad. He’d expected more people— “Wait. What that guy said…that there’s gossip about us?”

“Probably.” Peter crossed to the podium and the instruments. ‘“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?’”

“Not sports, no!” Mike shook his thicker, slower head at the beach outside the back window and its expanse of sand for volleyball and football. “No, that Nyles cat got the right idea—we should go out to people!”

“So you’re not just scared no one’s gonna turn up?”

Mike ignored whoever had said that. “Come on! Where’s your seasons feelings? We should go carousing!”

“Carolling?” Micky clarified.

“That too.” Mike nodded. “All merry and happy and bright.”

“Isn’t it just ‘merry and bright’?” Davy asked. “As in ‘dreaming of a white Christmas?”

“Depends. Could be ‘all merry, all happy all bright.’” Peter grabbed his banjo and passed Mike his acoustic, crooning, ‘“ _The young folks roll on the little cabin floor_ …” as he did so.

Mike blinked. He opened his mouth to ask Peter what he meant, either by his words or by…that gleam in his eye, then shut it again.

“I suppose this means you need me to grab me maracas.” Davy heaved a sigh, then laughed when the other two burst into chuckles. After a second, Mike caught the wave and giggled too.

“See? You’re not so strung-out now,” Peter crowed, as if he had something to do with it. “You’re more mellow.”

“Mell-ow.” Mike considered the word. Half sweet food, half happy cat and cat-bell noise, and half color, it was…too much, surely? He gave up on math and returned to linguistics. “Good word.”

“Good weed,” Peter muttered.

“Turn the stove right down and grab the keys?” Mike called to Micky.

“Sure!” Micky agreed. “And we’re really doing this?”

“Yeah, going out to people who don’t come talk to us.” Mike nodded so hard he felt a little dizzy.

They all tried to go through the front door at the same time and got stuck, which seemed the funniest thing ever. “You know, we should dress up more,” Mike pondered, out in the street.

“We should!” agreed Micky, who was…dressed as Santa, just as the rest of them had on Santa hats and beards. Micky shrugged. “Best I could do.”

“That kid’s weird,” Davy said again.

“Aren’t we all?” Peter threw in.

“Yeah. Yeah!” It seemed the profoundest statement ever, to Mike.

“Where we going?” Davy shivered a little.

He’d be colder, being smaller, Mike reckoned, throwing an arm around him. “The big house.” He doubled over, laughing at the funniest joke in ever. “Not prison! That one down the road.”

“The Willises?” Peter knew the neighbors’ names! Mike was grooving to the beat and alliteration of that and Peter repeated the question. "Why that one?"

“Oh, like in martial arts. Ya gotta take out the big guy first. Willises.” He didn’t know if he liked the willow tree weeping by the stream sound of the name. The house wasn’t very Christmassed. “They come at weekends, right?”

“They’re coming now.” Davy pointed to the couple leaving by the front door. “And…screeching?”

The man was, anyway, freezing at the sight of them before yelling, “It’s happened! They’re here! Marcia, look! No, don’t look—go get my gun! I said I should carry it at all times when we’re here and you scorned me!”

“I didn’t scorn you!” the woman yelled back. “I pooh-poohed you! There’s a difference!”

“Pooh—” sniggered Davy.

“Poohed!” tittered Peter.

“Tittered!” Micky spluttered.

“I said we’d have an invasion.” Mr. Willis looked almost gratified to be proved right. “Long-hairs! Beatniks or peaceniks or free lovers—”

“Well, we’re not paying for it!” Micky told him.

“I don’t have to!” Davy was doubled over laughing.

“We’re neighbors, ma’am,” Mike announced, then thought how loud his voice was. How could he turn the volume down?

“I’m sorry about my husband.” Marcia let that hang there when he started shouting again. She opened the car door for him. “He’s a little…about young people.”

“Like a phobia?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, they make him break out…his gun,” Micky deadpanned.

“Excuse us. We’re in a rush and a little preoccupied.” She opened her car door. “We have to go collect our daughter.”

“From playgroup?” Davy asked, making the woman preen.

“School,” Micky suggested.

“Hospital?” Mike asked.

“The cop shop?” Peter said, getting three nudges to his ribs.

“From a misunderstanding. It seems they had a Christmas Exchange for the first time in her department and she didn’t understand the concept. She thought it was bodily, as in people, not gifts. And so she’s gone to San Diego, in mistake. The family just called us.”

“Oh wow.” Mike tried to understand. “That sounds—”

“A mix-up, yes.” Mrs. Willis sounded defensive yet resigned.

A volley of beeping came from Mr. Willis at the car horn and then they had to scatter to avoid being skittles, as the car backed out.

“Christmas exchange? Is that a thing?” Mike wondered.

“Not really,” Peter considered.

“Allergic to young people, and calling us long-hairs!” Mike spluttered. “Imagine spending time with him. I bet his daughter understood all right and did that just to get away from him.”

“If not, she must be a real air-head. Imagine getting mixed up with a chick like that.” Micky shivered. “There’s another of these big houses on the next corner. You wanna try there?”

“Can’t be any worse than that one,” Mike supposed. “Isn’t it a doctor’s, or something?”

“Or…something,” Davy agreed, indicating the dark-haired man outside the front door. He was dressed in a white medical coat with a stethoscope around his neck and wore very thick-lensed glasses, through which his bug-eyes bulged and over which his caterpillar-eyebrows, a match for his bushy mustache, bristled. He was smoking a cigar and several more stuck out of his top pocket.

“Hello!” he called, waving smoke. “The birth was successful!”

“Congratulations?” Mike replied, finding himself drawn along the path toward the front door.

“Want to see?” The man passed them all a cigar and lit them.

“Erm, sure?” Mike coughed, letting the guy lead him into a clinical-looking room down the hall. “Boy or girl?”

“Both,” the man answered.

“Twins? Wow.” Micky clapped him on the shoulder. “Twice, eh?” He winked.

“Mike…” Davy tugged his sleeve. “It’s a litter.”

“I guess they didn’t get time to tidy up the trash on the floor, Davy,” Mike replied. “Don’t be so British, huh?”

“That’s not… Never mind.” Davy tugged at the guy’s sleeve instead. “How many in total, mate?”

The man rubbed his hands. “Four of each!”

“Four of… Why, that’s seven babies!” Mike squeaked.

“Eight,” Peter corrected.

“Well, that one’s small,” Mike defended himself. “They’re all small!” And were wriggling around in a box on the floor. “What kind of a doctor are you?”

“I’m Dr. Mann, and I’m a veterinarian!” the man replied. “Eight healthy Pekinese pups, all hand delivered. Shall we go wet the babies’ heads?”

“Sure, we’ll help.” Mike rolled up his sleeves to assist in bathing the puppies, but found himself in a large laboratory room—he grabbed Micky’s arm to stop him exploring, and Peter grabbed his other–where something was bubbling on an apparatus. Mike smelled cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and guessed the apple aroma was the alcohol.

“Mike?” pleaded Micky, as Dr. Mann swirled the conical-shaped filtering flask on the Bunsen flame.

“Well, I guess so.” Apple cider was seasonal and couldn’t be too stron— His mouth fell open as the good doctor tipped half a bottle of bourbon through a glass funnel into the mixture.

“Spiked cider,” he announced happily. “Stops the apples spoiling!”

“Dad, they don’t want that muck!” called a girl’s voice and a young woman came in, also wearing a white lab coat and holding a tray of what looked like cake stuff. She grinned. “Try this.”

Mike smelled cloves and liked the look of the cookie batter the girl was spooning into glass beakers. “That seems more appropriate,” he told Davy and Micky. “That—”

“Buttered rum?” The girl poured rum from a bottle with one hand and boiling water from a fat round bubble flask with the other into all the beakers, then topped the drinks with cinnamon sticks, and Mike, and all of them, had a spiked apple cider in one hand and a buttered rum in the other.

It was with a lot of difficulty that Mike got them all away after a while. They all had to peel Davy off the doctor’s beautiful daughter, and stop Micky putting his name down for four puppies. Mike’s head was singing, never mind swimming, when he’d marched Micky back again to return lab equipment and…chemicals he’d acquired. And then again, to return a lizard that was down his shirt.

He was kinda glad to get to the pad, where he held out his hand to Micky.

“What? I don’t got no more stuff or animals,” Micky protested, nevertheless looking shifty.

“No, I need the keys. You turned the oven down and that ham is just a little overcooked, but it’ll be okay if I get it right now.” Mike cast an anxious glance at the door, as if that would help him get to the kitchen.

“Keys? Oven? What are you talking about?” Micky went to turn the doorknob and it didn’t move. “Mike?”

“Oh no. No no no!” Mike tried the door handle too, then shouldered and kicked the door. It still didn’t open. “We’re locked out!”


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Mike thumped his fist against the wood of the door, which did nothing but make his hand tingle. “Micky! Where are the goddam keys?”

“What? Why do you think I got the keys?” Micky asked, looking bewildered and not as if he were doing some comedy routine, which had been a tiny flame of hope trying to flicker at the back of Mike’s mind.

“Because I asked you! I called to you to turn the stove right down and grab the keys and you said okay!” Mike exploded.

“I said _okay_ because I was agreeing with your suggestions, meaning that I thought it was a good idea that I assumed _you_ were going to do!” Micky yelled back.

“What? How— Why—” Mike’s words jammed.

“Guys.” Peter reached out with both hands to rub both their arms. “Cool it, okay?”

“No, not okay!” The deep breath Mike took, perhaps subconsciously mimicking Peter’s slow, steadying inhalation and exhalations, brought the smell of overcooked ham to his nostrils, making things worse and him want to cry. “’S’not okay,” he said again, quieter this time.

“Even so.” Peter was between Mike and Micky now. “Think about the vibes you’re putting out into the universe.”

“So what’s your suggestion, there, Big Pete?” Mike asked. “That we all sit in a circle and—”

“Peter _._ And meditate? Why not?” Peter answered him.

“You’re—” _Lucky you’re pretty_ , almost slipped from Mike.

It was a comeback usually used sarcastically…but Peter was, well, _pretty_ , with his head bent a little and his eyes closed, as if in prayer, maybe, making his eyelashes cast little shadows down his cheeks. Mike tried to think if he’d ever seen him like that, at that angle, this close, and thought no…he’d _never_ _seen Peter in this light before_. Whatever _that_ meant. And there was no time to puzzle that through, because Peter was raising his head, prior to opening his eyes.

And when he opened his eyes, to gaze into Mike’s, the brown of his irises was soft, like velvet, and made darker by all the shades of blond and dark-blond and sandy-blond and red-blond and red-brown and golden-brown in his hair, that tumbled into his eyelashes. Mike reached out a finger and swept Peter’s bangs from his eyes. His hair was soft and silky, and Mike liked the feel of it stroking across his fingertips. A strand remained behind, so he blew it free.

“Thank you, Michael!” Peter sounded a little startled, but not as if he minded. Mike didn’t know how to describe the expression flitting across his face, for all he saw it so close. When had Peter stepped so close, anyhow? Mike wasn’t…objecting. In fact, Peter’s nearness calmed him.

“Not sit, no!” Davy took up the contrarian position Mike had abandoned on his unexpected voyage of discovery, and Mike almost jumped at the little cocoon he was in being burst like that. “I’ve got to get in to get ready,” Davy continued. “I’ve—”

“ _Got a date_ ,” three voices chorused, Mike’s one of them. Ever since Davy had discovered how much the chicks here in LA dug him, the theatre kid had turned a ladies’ man. And how.

“You know that’s your answer to everything?” Micky asked. “Literally, I mean. Like, Davy, you use all the hot water? ‘I’ve got a date.’ It’s your turn to cook, Davy. ‘I’ve got a date.’ There’s a chick on the phone for you, Davy. ‘I’ve got a date.’

“Does that last one make sense?” Peter mused.

“I _have_ got a date! Which is why I’ve got to get in there.” Davy thumped on the door. “Let’s check the sundeck door.”

It was locked, as was the stained-glass door and the back windows and the bathroom window and the downstairs bedroom window…which was why Davy found himself being hoisted through the small gap that the kitchen window made when they got the top part open. Well, part-hoisted. Lifting him lying longways in their arms, face-down, they got his head through, but then he stuck.

“Squeeze!” Micky ordered them.

“Micky, we’re not tryin’ to get toothpaste back into the tube!” Mike said.

“You’d better bloody not be trying to squeeze anything out of or put anything into _any_ tube of mine,” Davy warned them. Mike didn’t think he was the only one frowning, trying to work that out.

“And stop squeezing _there_ , Micky, you sodding perve!” Davy tried to reach behind himself to slap Micky’s hands away from his ass. “It should be you doing this—you’re skinnier than I am.”

The other three looked at one another, various shades of _oh, yeah!_ evident in each face. Just because Davy was shorter in height didn’t mean he was the best choice to be shoved through a small gap in a partly opened window.

“Well, he’s there now,” Micky reasoned. “Wiggle him from side to side?”

“What, like you’re trying to get the last bit of tomato sauce out of the bottle? Bloody Nora, you’ll be stripping me down and greasing me up in lard like the Christmas turkey next!” Davy cried. “Put me down. It’s not gonna work and the stink from in there’s making me heave.”

“The Christmas ham!” Mike lamented.

“Not sure it was the food. Oh, that smells burnt, yeah, and there’s smoke coming from the oven.” Back on terra firma, Davy righted his clothes. “More a chemical stink. Like Micky often smells of? I always thought it was his talcum powder-in-a-barber’s-shop cologne gone bad and him too tight to chuck it out, but it’s reminding me of old bottles and jars in a chemist’s, or chemistry lab. You know, all those things you use to make potions?”

“Essences?” Mike asked.

“Extracts?” Peter added.

“Experiment!” wailed Micky, a look of horror crossing his face and staying there. “My exper— I mean, we just gotta get in there—come on!” He charged around to the front of the house and when they caught up with him at the door, he had both hands on it and was leaning into it. Then there came a flash of light or lightning or a lightning strike—within the pad.

“The hell?” Mike jumped back from where the edges of the door glowed red all around, in an outline, for a few seconds, like a fireball had burst and was trying to seep out.

“Shh. Don’t say that word!” Micky turned to look over his shoulder at them, and his face was tomato red, as if with strenuous exertion, before the color drained, to leave him sickly pale and sweating. His hands, still on the wood of the door, shook and he dropped them to his sides. “I think it should be open now.”

“Micky? See he’s okay, guys!” Mike called, shouldering the door open—he didn’t want to touch it with his hands, he found—and rushing inside, fanning burnt-ham-scented smoke away as he did so. He slammed his hand down on the light switch in the kitchen, but it wasn’t working. Well, he didn’t need more than the light coming in the window to get the roasting tray out of the oven—and see the Christmas ham was shriveled and dried up.

He dumped the ham into the sink and ran water onto it, hoping that would dissipate the smoke. Maybe the middle of the meat was salvageable? The small light on the counter wasn’t working either, for him to see to slice off the outer layers of the roast, and when he went to turn off the oven, he saw if wasn’t on. “Guess the power’s out,” he said. “That lightning strike, or whatever it was, must have blown the electrics.”

“So the food’s ruined and we can’t cook tomorrow. Christmas Day,” Davy summed up.

“Pretty much.” Mike sank into a chair.

“I know where there’s a half bottle of bourbon,” Micky’s voice called, and Mike sprang up again.

“Well, go get it!”

“ _Commm-iiiing!_ ” Micky whooshed down the spiral bannister, bottle in his hand, and the others just about caught him as he slid off the end. Mike hadn’t even seen him go upstairs. He looked better.

“Hey, I got one just like this,” Mike remarked, unscrewing the top and not bothering with a glass.

“Well, whadda’ya know? I found it next to a bottle of hot sauce,” Micky commented.

“I got one of those too! How ’bout that.” Mike passed the bottle to his left, uncaring of who took it. “Well, I guess the potato salad will do for the four of us tonight, right?”

The clatter was Peter dropping his spoon…into the now mostly empty dish of potato salad. “Oh.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Sorry.”

“You missed a bit.” Mike pointed to a cube of potato at the bottom of the bowl and a smear of mayo in Peter’s lip, using two hands to indicate both spots at the same time. The two-handed gesture made him feel like he was an air stewardess, which made him giggle.

“You’re taking this well,” Davy remarked.

“I got drinkulation,” Mike explained, at the same time as Peter said, “He’s drinkulated.” They both laughed. “Wut?” Mike queried of Peter, when he pointed at Mike and bent almost double, guffawing.

“Just, I know you normally act like the father of the group, but I didn’t know until just now that you were acting like my _actual_ father!” Peter managed to splutter out, grabbing at the tabletop to stay upright.

His words weren’t very clear, but Mike thought he got it, and found it funny. “’S’that make you the mom of this outfit? Well, _dear_ …” Mike had to pause to laugh too, holding on to the table in his turn, his hand next to Peter’s. “We gotta get the kids fed, and I guess we better keep the bread rolls and butter for the big day, tomorrow. So, what to do, heh?”

“Spangles?” Peter’s grin was a sunny, dimpled beam as he shared out the packet of candy he must have helped himself to.

“Well, it’s sweet to be gay, I guess,” Mike replied, philosophically, holding out his hand for his ration. He closed his hand around the square candies, thinking how much he enjoyed the touch of Peter’s fingertips in his palm, a sweet, soft half-caress he could feel long after Peter had removed his hand.

***

“I’m just happy you weren’t mad about stuff.” Back in the present, Micky finished sorting out the Christmas tree ornaments he’d made. “You even let me sleep on your mattress with you!”

“I had to!” Mike recalled. “What, with you being so scared after those Christmas ghost stories we were telling in the dark.”

“That you let us read and tell,” Davy reminded Mike.

“Yeah.” He normally tried to keep things lighter, for Micky. Well, and Davy. “I guess I agreed.”

“Well, you were a little…suggestible,” Peter said.

“Sensile,” Micky added, his word-a-day calendar bearing long-term fruit.

“Susceptible,” Davy clarified.

“Stoned.” Mike eyed the three of them.

“What?” “What?” and “What?” came in a three-part harmony.

“What what? You thought I’d never realize?”

“Well, yeah,” came in a three-voice chorus this time.

“Even after Peter turned me on?” Mike loved saying that. Loved thinking it too. “On my birthday?”

“Yeah…I think Peter turned you well before that, mate,” Davy said, smirking for England.

“At first sight,” Micky said, dreamily.

“Think you’re right. ‘At the first sight they have changed eyes.’” Davy switched from smirk to smug. “What? None of you lot ever heard of Shakespeare?”

“Wait.” Micky grabbed Davy’s wrist. “Were you in that play? _The Tempest_? Were you…Ariel?”

“Yeah, same production you were Caliban.” Davy shook his wrist free.

“Ariel?” Mike thought he’d heard of it. “He the fairy who goes around playing tricks on people in a forest?”

“No, Puck,” Davy answered.

“Oh, my! There’s no call for _that_ language, sonny!” Micky twittered in his old-lady voice…and clothes.

Mike gave up.

“Michael.” Peter finished arraying celery and carrots he’d cut lengthways around the California dip and wiped his hands. “You don’t feel bad about that first Christmas, though, right?”

“No.” Mike selected a packet of potato chips and tipped them into a bowl, his contribution to their open house even simpler than Peter’s. No point doing anything elaborate when their guests tended to bring rich food.

“Of course not! How could he when it was the first Beechwood gathering here at the pad!” Micky protested, throwing his arms over both their shoulders.

Neighbors had come in a slow but steady trickle all that Christmas morning two years ago, all bringing food and drink, and a festive meal had taken place at 1334.

“Yeah ’cause whatever you did fused the whole goddamn block and _you_ were the only one with a generator,” Mike reminded him.

Micky tapped his nose. “Be prepared.”

“Yeah, prepared for anything, in this place,” Mike muttered. He scrunched up the empty chips packet and pressed it down into the trash. “Oh, and talking of neighbors arriving…” He twisted his wrist to see his watch, and Peter reached for it to tilt it his way. Such a simple touch, just Peter’s fingers and thumb curling around his hand, but Mike still thrilled to it, and suspected that was why Peter still did it, despite having a good wristwatch of his own. One that Mike had bought him.

Peter glanced from Mike’s watch to the wall clock and started the count. “Three, two…”

On _one_ , a knock came at the door. The Kleins, exactly on time.

Peter spluttered. “D’you think they have that surname ’cause it rhymes?” he whispered, making Mike have to choke back his giggles as he threw open the door to their neighbors whose German ancestry conditioned their timekeeping and their inability to enter a house unless bidden, even though the door was open.

“Pastrami roll-ups with cream cheese and a pickle inside!” Micky kissed his fingers as he took their offering from them with the happiness of someone who’d correctly predicted what the couple would bring, getting himself one point on their neighbor + holiday food bingo competition.

“They only bring it because they know you like it so much,” protested Davy. “That shouldn’t count.”

“And more than Mrs. Homer’s sausage rolls and cheese straws, that she brings you because you tell her how your mother used to make them, should, then.” Mike eyed Davy the shameless.

“Mrs. Purdey’s always the wild card,” Peter mused, “in that she likes to try out new recipes on us before she serves them at ‘real parties’. But I still think it’s going to be smoked salmon canapes.”

“Let me guess. You saw her buying the food.” Mike shook his head at Peter the even more shameless.

“And she got that Classy Cuisine canape maker.” Peter nodded.

“Mrs. Purdey!” Mike greeted the woman herself as she came in. “We were just talking about you and your—”

“Mini salmon blinis!” she announced, whisking the cover of the plate of little pancakes. “Topped with soured cream, smoked salmon and caviar!”

“Oh no!” lamented Peter.

“He means, they look delicious and he’s dieting,” lied Mike, practically as shameless. “I’ll have his.” And as ruthless.

Davy nudged Peter. “Strike out on two more and you’re washing up for a week.” He snorted, taking a surreptitious glance at their game cards. “Prawn cocktails and cheese fondue might be the latest thing in New York or Connecticut, but no one’s bringing ’em in North Beechwood Drive, mate!”

“Oh, he’s safe with betting on Shelley bringing Ritz crackers that she picked up at a gas station mini mart on her way here,” Micky judged, indicating the square in question.

Peter was right.

“Extra point if you guess which gas station she got them at?” Micky offered, following Shelley’s progress to the kitchen with the familiar red cardboard box.

“That’s enough gambling,” Mike ordered.

“But—”

“E-nough.” Mike picked up a meatball in grape jelly and stuffed it into Micky’s mouth.

“Huh. Good job we didn’t have a bet on that—it’d’ve put an end to my winning streak.” When no one asked Davy what he meant, he added the zinger: “I’d’ve betted he’d have a wiener in his mouth before a ball.”

Mike gave up.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Mike was glad neither Shelley nor her parents had brought baby Henry. It had taken Peter a while to get over not having a baby around the house, after he’d thought there would be, and however Mike had felt about that—either the child’s earlier presence or her now-absence—he didn’t want Peter to have to face any reminders before he was ready to do so.

He’d explained to both Shelley and Mrs. Purdey that they were unavailable to watch little Henry for a while, and so far there’d been no last-minute emergencies of the type necessitating the kid being carted around to 1334. Peter should be fine with him again by the new year, Mike reckoned. _Hoped._

He was glad too that none of their other guests brought kids that young with them. Beechwood didn’t really have many babies and the few kids accompanying their parents or grandparents were older, but young enough to be fascinated by the jukebox, and begging to be allowed to choose records and put them on themselves. Huh, if the jukebox had needed coins to operate it, they’d have cleaned up. He winced at the blast of rock and roll following a slower, dreamier ballad.

“The Rawlings kids have broad tastes in music,” commented Davy, grinning.

“Or broad tastes in record choices at least,” Mike replied. Well, they hadn’t been expecting people to dance, anyway.

“We playing?” Davy asked, perhaps catching Mike’s glances at the bandstand.

“Oh, just a couple seasonal songs, for fun,” Mike replied. “Not like we charged admission, like at the summer shindig.” When they did, they played a couple songs every half-hour or so, so that no matter what time people arrived and left, they heard at least a little bit of the Monkees’ repertoire. Letting people see—or in the case of music, hear—the goods also served as a form of advertising, Mike had found, especially in the early days, when most of their work had been in the immediate neighborhood, mainly via direct contact with locals.

Maybe we should have charged an entrance fee today, like in July, what with the lack of regular well-paid gigs, he wondered. No, he wasn’t going to think about anything financial or work or career stuff right now. He helped hoist the youngest Rawlings up to see the chimp on the top of the tree and replied well, he didn’t rightly know if that was the _actual_ Santa underneath, but…

“Well, there’s a present underneath him!” The boy pointed at the bag under Mr. Schneider’s stool.

“Already?” Mike didn’t know how, seeing as they hadn’t gone Christmas gift shopping yet. That… _pleasure_ was tomorrow. But yeah, there was a large-ish square box in a department store bag that was folded over and stuck down. Its size and shape meant Mike didn’t have to shake it, or even pick it up, to guess what it was and who’d left it. He turned to look for Nyles and didn’t have to look far for him, either.

“Hey there! You got a drink and something to eat?” Mike greeted Nyles and indicated the array of snacks on the kitchen table. “And thank you very much, but you don’t have to bring us presents. Especially when you don’t even come to play the board games with us.”

“I tried, but your games nights are wild, man!” Nyles shivered. “People dropping down dead if someone makes a face at them, and then you make a pretty pattern and it all collapses?”

Wink Murder and dominoes had freaked their neighbor out. As Micky had said at the time, it was a good thing they didn’t own Clue or Operation—Nyles would have run off screaming into the night.

“Well, you’re more’n welcome to come around any games night.” Mike wondered if this latest game was as way-out as Pass-Out, the drinking game that had been last year’s gift. Or as mind-blowing as Lie Detector, from the year before. “We play cards too. You like cards, right? Sitting around the table, playing for jellybeans or mints?”

“Jellybeans!” Nyles found that hysterical. “Mints!” That too. “And there’s no sitting around _anything_ in _this_ game, brother.” He flashed Mike a peace sign and wandered off.

“Thanks!” Mike called after him. He doubted the game, whatever it was, would stay wrapped up, such as it was, until Christmas, with there being a good few days to go, but they’d learned to host this drop-in open house well over a week before Christmas and certainly not on the Eve, when everyone was running around busy and even frantic. _Busy. Frantic._ _Kinda like the pace of life here any day of the year._ Had his life back in Texas been this, well, frenetic? Mike tried to recall. College had, a little, with classes and assignments and appearing in plays and performing music. Not to mention his complicated love life…

All of that, especially the latter, would only have gotten more hectic if he’d stayed, he felt. He wondered about the others. Had Davy’s life, in England, been at this pace, this rhythm? Peter’s, in Connecticut or the Village? Micky’s probably always had. _Micky_. Not for the first time Mike wondered about the cause of the dizzying, _intense_ life they led here. Whenever he’d had time to ponder it, he’d always kinda assumed it was to do with Beechwood as a locale, maybe, or the pad as a place, perhaps, but if a person wanted to narrow things down, to pinpoint to a specific, well, center or core…

His gaze tracked Micky, on his unicycle, cycling around the table to eat the different snacks…straight from the table, without the use of his hands to pick them up because he was loading his dart gun at the same time. _That kid’s weird_ , Davy often said, but would an adjective like _uncanny_ be more accurate?

“Hey.” Peter, at his side, touched his arm, making Mike jump and wrench his gaze away. “You’re pensive.”

“Oh, well, it’s Christmas.” Mike fell back on Micky’s excuse.

“Umm.” Peter passed him a plastic cup of fruit punch to taste. And it was only fruit juice. Mike had insisted, made it, and kept checking it. “Yes, it’s a time of year when people look back.”

“Oh, not me, babe.” Mike couldn’t bear Peter to think he had the slightest qualm or apprehension. “I’m looking forward. To later.” A second later a plastic dart suctioned itself right to the center of his forehead, and the pad’s resident nutjob cawed in delight from across the room.

“I get to choose the TV show later!” he crowed, making a victory lap of the den.

“Oh, Michael!” Peter unstuck the dart with a lewd _pop_ while Mike was still blinking, startled. “I’m so sorry to laugh but—”

“Don’t be.” Mike gave a quick glance around. “I love how your dimple deepens when you smile that big and that beautiful.” He risked a tiny touch to the sweet yet sexy little hollow in Peter’s cheek. “You could lose a nickel in there.”

“That’d be useful, for when we need one, which we do tend to,” Davy threw in.

Davy’s tone could be cutting, and Mike felt a little hurt by that remark. “I do my best to manage,” he couldn’t help saying in self-defense. “The budget, the spending, expenses…I try and—”

“Oy. Sit there.” Davy’s push to Mike’s shoulder had the backs of his knees hitting the chair behind him and giving him no choice but to sit. Davy followed him down, parking himself on the arm of the chair and leaning into Mike. “You don’t just do your best. You do a bloody good job. At all of it,” he told him and looped his arms around Mike to hug him. “Yer daft ha’p’orth.”

 _Oh._ Mike wanted to say thanks, not just for the compliment but for the validation, but didn’t know if he could trust his voice not to sound too thick and throaty, so settled for making his half of the hug extra tight and extra long. “One day”—he coughed, just a little, to get his voice normal—“you’re gonna explain what a ha’p’orth is, right?” He stood, missing being close to Peter already.

“And why you wanted Mike to sit down for the hug,” Peter added.

“You kidding?” Davy stood too, and indicated the difference in their heights. “If not, I’d look like a koala bear climbing a tree, man!”

“Whereas sitting on a chair with him looks like a ventriloquist with his dummy!” Micky, who’d abandoned the unicycle for Mike’s pogo stick, bounced over to say, pointing at Mike and Davy in turn to make it clear which was which in his analogy.

“Micky, mate.” Davy’s smile gleamed…sharklike. “Okay, so you couldn’t resist the quip. I get that. Saw the way you _boinged_ clean across the den to deliver it. But _you_ really want to talk or even _think_ about ventriloquists and _dummies_?”

“What? No! No, no…” Micky’s negatives accompanied each rapid bounce away he took, his curly little head shaking a further denial with each one. A scared-sounding “ _Nooo!_ ” reached them from the sundeck.

“And maybe one day we’ll learn why they freak him out,” Mike observed, a philosophical tone to his voice.

“I think I’d rather not know,” Peter decided. “Oh, look who’s here!”

“Mandy and Minty.” Mike suppressed a laugh.

With a “And which one’s the mother and which one’s the daughter?” Davy snaked over to the two ladies.

“We can’t stop—on our way to a fitting!” Amanda trilled. “But do enjoy this sweet, if small, contribution to the eats…”

The desserts she spread out on the counter were small only in size of the portions, not small in number.

“Oh my.” Mike eyed the thin slices of cake and mini squares of cookies, the titchy pudding cups and tiny pies. “And it can’t be leftovers from _her_ evening—Micky would’ve gotten to it before now!” He dabbed at Micky’s mouth for him with a napkin—kid was drooling over the lemon chiffon and peach Bavarian.

“Yes, I know you love tarts and fondling,” Amanda called over to him.

“She said _fondue_ , right?” Micky whispered to Mike, who patted him.

“And if everyone wouldn’t mind filling out these cards as they taste each sample…” Amanda slapped a pile of small bits of paper down, and a handful of pencils. “We’re trying to decide on the dessert table for the engagement ball.”

“She had to say it. Now this cheesecake’ll taste like ashes in my mouth,” Micky declared with more drama than accuracy, sampling two flavors, a spoon in each hand, to make sure. “And these individual souffles like grave dirt.” He had a third spoon between his teeth now, to eat three portions of souffle in quick succession, the spoons flashing and swapping places as speedily as the queen and two kings did in three card monte.

“Yes, yes, and the Baked Alaska like gall and the Pavlova like wormwood. Just don’t put any of that on the scorecard,” Amanda ordered, breezing out. “Come along, Mummie. We’ve already lost Toby—I don’t want to misplace you too.”

Mike waved their goodbyes as the two women did a circuit of the den, greeting and leave-taking, and exited. “Wondered what she’s having fitted,” he mused.

“ _I_ wonder where they lost Toby,” came indistinctly from Micky. “Hope she’s okay.”

“Oh, she’s probably still trying to get all that blue paint off her,” Mike betted. He knew he was still wondering how to get it out of their clothes.

“The day spa Amanda likes has lots of steam and exfoliation treatments. She’s probably gone there.” Peter tried a fruit cup.

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t get invited with the two of you on your little beauty therapies day out.” Mike fought a pout. “Not that you need it,” he hastened to add.

“Nearly,” Davy commented, sucking in air through his teeth and still miffed at not having been invited either. “And it’s as much for the fellah, anyway, all that primping and fussing.”

“What? You think women don’t do things for themselves?” Peter took in a breath, gearing up—

“Whoever it was for, ‘You look mighty good to me,’” Mike sang, hoping to defuse the situation, and seconds later all four of them were on the bandstand, instruments in hand, for Mike to declare, “You got the sweetest pair of eyes, And your kiss would be paradise…”’ while wishing he could use the correct pronouns in the song so everyone knew as firmly as Peter did who he’d written it for.

“You do something to my soul…” Peter took over for the third verse, singing to Mike.

“That no one’s ever done,” Mike sang, sharing it with him. Sharing _everything_ with him.

“If you’re lookin’ for true love…” Peter’s smile looked as though it had been designed purely to showcase his dimple.

“Then let me be the one,” Mike finished, wondering if his smile was as broad as Peter’s.

Micky and Davy’s harmonizing brought in as much applause as it always did, and the group segued into a Christmas number, but played Mike’s song again later when, the last of their guests had gone and the bigger bits of mess cleaned, they were rehearsing their most romantic songs for their paid gig at Amanda’s engagement party.

“Ball,” corrected Peter.

Well, not exactly, but gettin’ close, the way he was moving, swiveling his hips, practically humping that bass of his! Mike eyed him. “Gone back to the old days, have we, when you were tryin’ to get me to notice you?”

“Oh, you noticed me all right. See how thin these bands pants are worn?” Peter bent forward and patted his ass. His mighty fine, rounded yet toned ass. “You almost burned a hole through these uniform pants, you were noticing me so much!”

“What?” Mike staggered where he stood. “I… You… Well, way you wriggle it _and_ pump those hips? What chance does a poor country boy from the south stand?” He loved making Peter giggle. And wiggle.

“Get a room!” groaned Davy, shaking his tambourine in between them.

“We got one…” Mike reminded him, his eyes still on Peter.

And later, when the kitchen and the den were more or less tidied and the pad settling down for the night, he was just about to persuade Peter to visit said room with him, when a familiar female voice called “Happy Christmas! Oh. Has it finished?”

“Hi, Tobes. No, Christmas isn’t finished yet,” Davy greeted her. “Hasn’t even started, for most normal people.” He threw a balled-up paper napkin at Micky.

At least Toby’s color was back to normal, even if there was a faint suggestion of cerulean blue about her hair.

“The at-home was kinda during the day,” Mike said.

“But you’re still at home.”

“She’s got you there, Mikey.” Micky approached, homing in on the little basket Toby carried. He pointed at it. “You going to visit Grandma in the forest?”

“No…” Toby replied after a while, and Mike wanted to roll his eyes at Micky for confusing her. “Oh!” Her shout had them all jumping. “Because of the basket of goodies! You’re funny, Micky! But yes, I have been baking all day.”

“In that case, you must be just about done by now, little lady,” Micky quipped, sporting cigar, mustache, glasses and eyebrows like Groucho Marks.

“Mike?” Toby pulled on his sleeve, jerking her head toward Micky. “I’m confused.”

“So’s he, Tobes. So’s he.” Davy glared at Micky for perplexing Toby. God knew it was easily done. “What have you been making?” He patted the basket to make his meaning clear.

“Oh, those little English cakes you wanted, that you were homesick for at Christmas!” Toby smiled brightly. “Mice pies, right?”


	16. Chapter Sixteen

“ _M—_ ” was as far as Mike got, his speech seizing up in his throat.

“ _Mi—_ ” Micky tried.

“ _Mice?_ ” Peter got further, squeaking like one of the animals in question, and clutched Mike’s hand in horror.

“For God’s sake, guys!” Davy rolled his eyes at the three of them. “ _Mince_ pies, you mean, Toby?”

“ _Mince_? Not mice? But…” Toby whipped the cover off her basket and Mike’s hand hurt where Peter clutched it harder.

The small pastry cases were fat and round, their tops fitting neatly within their fluted edges. They looked like the pictures in Davy’s English magazines and like the small box of this dessert his sisters had sent him last year. Mike had tasted one and remembered the rich, sticky, sweet yet spicy fruity filling wrapped in pastry.

“Peter, it’s okay, babe.” Mike peeled Peter’s free hand from his eyes. “You can look.” _There’s no tails or ears,_ he tried to tell him.

“Isn’t that silly of me. I guess I misremembered the name and thought they were called _mice_ pies because they were small.” Toby shook her head. “Sorry. You probably haven’t noticed, but I sometimes get, well, um…”

“Mixed up,” said Mike.

“Muddled.” Peter smiled.

“Misunderstandings.” Davy patted her.

“Mistaken?” Micky asked.

“Things wrong,” Toby said with raw dignity. She set the basket on the counter, took out the golden-brown wares with their dusting of powdered sugar and transferred them onto a plate.

Davy touched a fingertip to a sprinkle of soft sugar. “I love these. They really represent this time of year to me. I asked Amanda to get her mum to bring some from England, but these are homemade, you said?”

“Yeah. That Minty lady forgot. She seems a bit absent-minded, if you ask me.” Toby dusted off her hands. “But I didn’t want to let you down. You’ve been so good to me, Davy, especially lately. So I thought I’d do this for you, make you some English Christmas food. Christmas pies. Minced pies.”

“Mince,” said Micky, his fingers reaching out to the plate. “May I?”

“Sure! There’s plenty,” Toby answered. “That’s why it took me so long.”

“Fhankzz.” Micky spoke around a full mouth. Then his eyes opened just as wide and bulged in their direction.

“Yeah, thanks, Toby,” Davy echoed, taking a pie.

Mike and Peter followed suit, biting into the sweet pastry shells that held—

“Sirloin.” Toby beamed proudly. “Oh yes, I used good quality meat. Not chuck or round.” She looked from one to another of the three that were choking. “Mike? Peter? Davy?”

“Thisisn’tmincemeat!” Davy got out through his splutters. He wiped his mouth and looked about to cry.

“Yes, it is!” Toby smacked his arm. “I got the butcher to mince it up especially, in that machine that minces meat!”

“It’s _minced meat_!” Davy stared aghast at the remains of the pie he held.

“Yes, I know!” Toby half-shouted. “I just told _you_ that!”

“Not mincemeat,” Mike said to clarify. “Not a mixture of dried fruits, sugar and spices.”

“And brandy,” Peter added.

“Iwas tryinatell you!” Micky blew out crumbs from his second meat pie in sweet pastry as he spoke. His third was ready in his hand. “What? I like ’em!”

“You also like Spam and sardine pizza with cherry Lik-m-ade topping,” Mike reminded him.

“I do _not_!” Micky protested. “Cherry Lik-m-ade indeed! I use grape with Spam and you know it!”

“Yeah…so this mix of ground meat mixed with sugar in sugary pastry dusted in sugar is what, gourmet cuisine to you?” Davy asked.

“It’s bitchin’, is what it is.” Micky filched the remains of Davy’s pie from his sad hand.

“Ooh!” Toby looked thrilled at Micky’s approval. “What do the rest of you think? Guys?”

“I’m a vegetarian.” Peter might have been aiming for a regretful tone, but his face was smug as he put down his bitten-into pie. “Michael?”

 _Oh, the little—_ “Well…” was the best Mike could do. “Davy?”

“It’s…” Davy tried, but his mouth screwed up, closed tight.

“Amanda said that too. And she pulled that face.” Toby pointed at Davy’s.

“Well, we’re both English, luv.” He tried his cheeky shrug. “Ask me, it needs a dollop of cream. Or a wallop of custard.”

“Oh _yeah_.” Micky nodded approval. “We got any?”

“No,” Mike replied, wondering if they had antacid. He sure felt he needed some.

“What’s everyone doing tonight?” Toby asked.

Mike tried to ignore the way Davy looked at him and Peter and smirked, one eyebrow raised.

“It’s my turn to choose the TV show,” Micky told her, pouting when Mike shoved the remaining pies into the ice box and raised a warning finger. “TV and associated activities.”

“What?” Mike turned to him. “We didn’t say that!”

Throwing a “You didn’t say I couldn’t!” over his shoulder, Micky scamped off into the downstairs bedroom and reappeared dragging two mattresses and several pillows and covered in blankets and throws. “Christmas Monkee pile!” he announced, dropping the mattress and unwinding the bedding from himself to arrange that too in the middle of the den. “Like, deluxe Monkee pile.”

“Oh, how all the usual goods in stores are rebranded as ‘luxury’ just before Christmas and the prices increased?” Peter asked, helping straighten out the covers and pillows.

“Yeah, and covered in tinsel.” Davy nodded. “Talking of, if that’s my mattress, there’d better not be any stray holly anywhere likely to cause damage.”

“Or mistletoe anywhere likely to cause mis…chief…” Mike blinked—they were all in pajamas, all mismatched, although they’d probably make up five sets if re-arranged. Five because even Toby. Although she quite often was, anyway.

She looked down at her nightwear and then at the pile of bedding. “Room for a little one?”

“Sure, and he’s already here!” Micky pointed at Davy, then dodged Davy’s corrective slap and went to turn on the TV. He hit the lights, leaving the small lamp on the writing desk and the tree lights on to complement the glow of the screen. “C’mon, guys!” he wheedled.

Peter bent obediently at the knees and sank down into the pile, reaching out for Mike to bring him down with him.

“But…” Mike flicked his gaze up toward their room. And their bed. Where they could—

“Not a-bloody-gain!”

Affronted and heading for fuming, Mike whipped his head to Davy after that exclamation, to see him gesturing at the screen. “This old film was on this time last year, and the year before!”

“It’s a seasonal movie, so it’s always on this time of year.” Peter answered, patting the space behind him for Mike.

Mike shook his head. Tucked in tight behind Peter, pressed against his sexy ass, the way Mike was feeling…and with what he was hoping to be feeling? _Not likely._

 _Oh come on! We’re in company—you can hardly_ do _anything!_ Peter stared at him.

Mike tried to squash down the _anythings_ he had in mind just as Micky slowly rose from his place in the middle and turned even more slowly, to gawp at him.

 _Micky! Didn’t you learn anything in Disneyland?_ Mike seethed.

 _…yes…_ came from Micky after a second as he looked from Mike to Peter, then at Mike’s hand and rubbed his ass.

And Mike had more to try to tamp down in his mind’s eye now, namely him spanking Micky’s bare ass cheeks, and Micky, well—

“ _What?_ ” Toby asked, her eyes enormous, looking all around. “Wait. No one was making pictures or speaking then, right? _Oh wow._ Is anyone else seeing pictures and hearing voices in their head?”

“Oh, ‘’s’probably to do with being twins, isn’t it?” Micky answered, smooth as peanut butter.

“I’m _not_ twins!” Toby looked as though she was going to stand up to stamp her foot. “When you say that, it makes me sound crazy-bananas-town. I’m _one_ of a _pair_ of twins.”

A lot of her remarks tended to be greeted with silence and this was one of them.

“So you probably have a telepathic link with your brother?” Peter asked.

“Oh, not for years!” Toby laughed. “He used to try to cheat off me in tests.”

“How…did that work out?” Mike had to ask. Because he couldn’t imagine Toby, although sweet and kind-hearted, being anywhere near the top of her class…

“Not well. Not when we took different subjects,” she answered.

“Shh.” Davy indicated the TV screen. “Settle down. We have to watch this film—Micky’s in it!” His smile was more of a smirk and Mike wondered why. Figured they’d find out, though.

Resigned, he settled in, pulling Peter alongside him. “As a baby?” he queried. The movie was old.

“Yeahhh. Sort of.” Micky looked cagey. “Dad’s in a couple scenes—he’s one of Cary Grant’s friends, in the early scenes in the diner and office—and he took me to the audition…”

“So that baby that the charming but clueless bachelor becomes the guardian of is you?” Peter asked, pointing.

“Yeaaahhhhh. Sort of.” Micky looked cagier. “You know, we could change the channel and—”

“No, this one’s fine. How so ‘sort of’?” Davy’s smirk had intensified. A few months back, in the summer, he’d been researching into Micky’s early-days body of work, mainly for material to use against him, and Mike had the distinct feeling he’d found some. And intended to. And how.

“A sort of stand-in. Anyone want popcorn?” Micky went to move.

“No, we’re all full. What sort of stand-in?” Davy was relentless.

“Oh! There’s Micky’s bum!” Toby pointed at the screen and the baby having its diaper changed. “Look!”

“Ah. _That_ sort of stand-in.” Davy’s sniggers filled the den. “I knew we’d get to the bottom of it, smoothly!”

“No, no!” Micky shook his head. “It wasn’t just my butt because it was smooth and soft—”

“It still is,” Toby interrupted, making them all stare. “He hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Hey!” Micky’s face was reddening. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t just my—”

“Peachy little dimpled botty?” Davy was still laughing.

“No, it was because I could perform on cue and the kid who got the part couldn’t!” Micky half-yelled.

“Perform on cue as in _cry_ on cue?” Mike wondered.

“I’m betting…not…exactly.” Peter indicated the screen, where Cary Grant’s charming but clueless bachelor, trying to change a diaper for the first time, was now…wet. And it didn’t look like water had sprayed him in an arc, either.

“Ah. The other end.” Mike nodded. “And hey, Micky, that’s another thing about you that’s not changed!”

“Hang on. Did nobody but me catch that?” Davy turned to Toby and jerked a thumb at Micky. “You’ve seen his _arse_?”

“No, of course not, silly.” Toby smacked Davy’s arm. “Just pictures of it.”

“What? Micky…” Mike pulled in a breath, frightening visions trying to burst in his head like firecrackers. “The hell you been up to, boy?”

“Nothing!” he protested, looking alarmed. “Toby? You didn’t take pictures of my…rear, for some project or other?”

“Would I do that?” Toby objected, looking from one Monkee to another. No one replied. “No. Amanda’s got some. She showed me.”

The silence that followed this remark of hers was one of the longest yet.

“Well, at least you got to pee on Cary Grant, Micky,” Peter said, at last. “How many people can say that, right?”

Micky opened his mouth as if to tell him a number, but then closed it again. He looked a little down, though.

“Hey, Toby.” Mike thought he’d better change the subject, well away from Micky’s butt or his…anything, really. “I was thinking today about when you went to San Diego, by mistake. Remember?”

“Which time?” Toby answered.

“Which— _What?_ ” Mike boggled.

“It wasn’t my fault.” Toby settled the blanket around her. “I mean, you hear the name San Diego Aztecs and what do you think? That you can do your Anthropology requirement assignment there, right?”

“Erm…” Mike couldn’t think how to finish his reply.

“And…did you do your assignment?” Peter asked.

“Oh, yes! Luckily you can go whale watching there in this old historical schooner. They say it’s like going back in time and luckily that’s what happened.”

“So…” Peter looked at Mike for help to finish that sentence. That question. Mike just shook his head. If Toby had gone back in time—and he wouldn’t rule it out—he’d just rather not know. “So you…” Peter continued.

“Sorry—I gotta concentrate. I think there’s going to be a plot twist and the baby’s really _him_ —like a second chance, like in that movie with the three ghosts, you know? You know the one, where they come at Christmas and sing a carol. Oh, what’s it called…” Toby turned back to the TV, brow furrowed.

“Leave it,” ordered Davy when Mike opened his mouth to tell her the name of the movie. He also wanted to ask how could the baby in _this_ movie be the same man as the man who was taking care of it _and_ when it was the child of his old friend from college, whose untimely death, along with that of his wife, had left the hapless man the baby’s guardian— “I _said_ , leave it.” Davy held a finger to his lips.

Mike left it, thinking that plot seemed more apt for one of those arty European movies Peter tried to drag him to from time to time.

“Oh, talking of arty European movies, I’ve rented out the house for some scenes from some British movies to be shot there!” Toby announced. “But I’m not allowed to say which ‘films’ as they call them.”

“Oooh!” Micky was all agog. “Can you give us a clue?”

“About what?” Toby asked.

“The movies they’re gonna be filming in the Willises’ house. In your house.” Mike stull thought of the place by the name he’d known it originally.

“Oh. Let’s see… Oh, I know. ‘Go get me a drink. Right now, you saucy little bitch,’” Toby half-shouted in a deep voice.

Micky was halfway to the kitchen before she caught his sleeve. “No, it’s what the character always says! I was doing it to show you. I can’t really do the accent.”

“Maybe try again?” Davy suggested.

“Oh, God. I mean, oh, go on?” Mike caught himself.

“I’m going to kill you by shooting you dead, you no-good filthy SPECTRE!” Toby yelled.

“Whoever he or she is, I’m guessing they’re a little deaf?” Mike stuck his finger in his ear to stop it ringing.

“It’s not… _Jimmy Cagney_?” Micky’s eyes were the size of saucers.

“Yes, you’re right! It’s not!” Toby nodded, then sighed. “It should make my parents happy, anyway. They haven’t been too pleased abut how I’ve been managing things since living there. That alligator dropping from the helicopter thing, where they had to have the roof re-done, was the last-but-one straw.”

“Let’s hope so. And let’s hope it all goes fine.” Peter’s words were designed to settle everyone down, and Mike looked longingly up the stairs. It couldn’t be long now before he and Peter could sneak away.

“Oh, is that you stunt doubling the baby being sick?” Davy pointed at the screen where Cary Grant was attempting to present an important project at an important meeting, with his inherited baby over one shoulder.

Micky nodded. “Yeah. Seems they fed me all this weird mixture of food to make me hurl.”

So that was where he’d gotten the taste for the crazy combos he chowed down on!

“And it’s present shopping tomorrow!” Micky’s tone of satisfaction carried over into his triumphant blow on the party horn, that the glint in his eyes said he’d hidden from Mike and his pin that had rendered the rest noiseless.

“Let’s settle down, huh?” Mike knew when he was defeated.

“’Ere, what’s those lumps?” Davy pointed at the round protuberances making the blanket stick up…halfway down Micky’s body.

“Mince pies. I got ’em in my pajama bottoms’ pockets.” Micky pulled them out from under the covers and stuck them under his pillow instead. “No stealing, guys.”

“Yuk. You’re a pig. And for the love of God, keep your bag of mixed nuts to yourself,” Davy begged, turning back to the movie. “Oh, and your cheese straw.”


	17. Chapter Seventeen

“Okay.” It wasn’t anything like cold enough for Mike to see his breath plume in the West Hollywood air, but he almost felt he could. Or maybe he just wished he was smoking. Tobacco or dope. Either would do. “Now, focus up here. We’re doing this—”

“ _Straight_ ,” sighed Peter, slumping next to him at the café table.

“Fast,” Mike corrected.

“Right,” said the Monkee chorus.

“Strong.”

“Right.”

“Sure.”

“Right.”

“You all know the rendezvous points for the switchovers.”

“Right.”

“Synchronize watches…”

Three wrists banged side by side over the table and three hands fiddled with the watches on them. Not Peter.

“Peter!” Mike yelped. “I got you a watch to wear, not keep in a box—”

“With the rest of his treasures,” Micky threw in. “Because you got it him.”

Well, true, but… “I’ll get you another for everyday,” he promised Peter, then returned to the Christmas task at hand—the present-buying expedition. “And we all know”—he yanked in a breath but didn’t dare look up—“who’s going where to buy what for who, right?”

No answering chorus of “Right!” greeted this. Instead the multi-party argument started up again, and not just Peter correcting Mike’s who to whom this time. The table of the fashionable—this week—café on Sunset were they were all sitting was too small for Mike to _thunk_ his head down onto, making their breakfast cups chink, so he settled for dropping his head down into his hands instead.

“Here.”

Mike almost jumped at the groovy-manicured and even more groovy-jewelery-wearing hand appearing in his field of vision. He sat up and angled away for the waitress to refill his coffee cup. It was the same brunette who’d seated them at this prime sidewalk table, claiming they’d be good for business. She did that manoeuvre with the oversized carafe of coffee and the cup and a fresh napkin that normal people needed three hands for, but that waitresses did so smoothly. Well, the good ones anyway.

“On the house. Looks like you need it,” she said, tilting her chin toward the feuding Micky and Davy on the opposite side of the table.

Oh, he did. He might have given up buying coffee, to save money, but that didn’t include turning it down in cafes, especially not ones that gave free refills of the life-giving fuel. “I sure do. Thank you kindly, ma’am.” He saluted her with the cup.

“My pleasure, Tex.” Was that a wink? Mike stared. “You need anything else, you call me, okay?”

“Ye…es?” he replied as she sashayed back inside the café, her bracelets jingling.

“She didn’t give _me_ a top up.” Micky blew a sad bubble into his soda.

“And that’s not all she gave him, yeah?” Davy muttered to Peter, nodding at the table. Peter’s brow creased for a half-second before he leaned in to pluck up the paper napkin that had been beneath Mike’s cup and hold it out for them to see. “Yeah, that would make it easier to call her.”

“Huh? Oh.” Mike set down his half-empty-already cup. The blue marks on the paper weren’t a design, the place’s logo, or anything like that: the brunette had slipped him her number.

“For a freebie coffee?” Davy scoffed at the thought. “Nah. You wanna hold out for her baps, mate. Oh, wait. You call ’em buns here, right?” He brought his teacup to his mouth to hide any self-satisfied grin at this triple-decker zinger.

“Man, it’s that jacket, I tell you!” Micky burst out, pointing at Mike. “You always wear it this time of year—”

“When it’s colder?”

“And you always get the chicks hitting on you. It’s the jacket!” Micky rested his case, along with his pointy little elbows on the table.

“Thanks for that.” Mike tried to keep the sour note from his reply. Didn’t think he succeeded.

“Can I b—”

“No.” No one, least of all Micky, borrowed it. Well, Mike might let Peter, should he ever want to. “Mick, you’d look like a kid playing cowboys and Indians—sorry, native Americans—in it.”

“Which you still do,” Davy pointed out to Micky.

“Yeah, and who plays it with me?” Micky demanded of him.

“Well, it’s good for keeping in shape, running up and down the beach and over the dunes. And besides, I like giving you a head start then chasing you with a bow and arrow or a cap gun or a tomahawk.” Davy grinned. “Who wouldn’t, eh, fellas? Times you two’ve leaned out the window and shouted ‘Give him one from me.’”

“That’s as may be.” It was. “And in case I wasn’t clear, no. The answer’s no,” Mike repeated. Peter had been silent, the paper napkin in his hand, and Mike rubbed his knee against Peter’s under the tiny table. “Hey.” He waited until Peter looked him in the eye. “I hope you know I got no interest at all in or intention of calling that number.” 

“Yeah, Petey! Why would Mike sneak out for hamburger when he’s got beefcake at home?” Micky of course.

“Peter’s a vegetarian,” Davy answered. “And its _cheesecake_ he thinks Mike might be craving.”

“Babe?” Mike whispered. Did Peter really believe Mike wanted a _chick_?

“Of the tall, bossy-bordering-on-forceful brunette flavor,” Peter answered, his voice as quiet as Mike’s.

“Sugar, we went into that at the joint counseling session,” Mike reminded him, not tacking, _and how_ and a whistle on the end, although it deserved one. “And I’m ready to talk it through again if you want.”

“And _I’m_ ready to listen.” Micky sat forward.

“You _soddin’_ perve!” Davy commented.

“Iffen I wanted a chick, I’d tell you,” Mike continued.

“As I said, ready to listen.” Micky, eyes huge, reached for his soda and sucked some up.

“Like, if I ever thought…it was something we could do together, say,” Mike said.

“ _Phoo-uckk!_ ” Micky, having spilled most of his drink down himself, was choking on what was in his mouth.

“ _Jesus!_ ” Mike exclaimed. “Boy, you need your sippy cup and a bib? ’Cause I got both in the trunk, you know that? Davy, help him.” He waited until Davy was busy dabbing very hard at Micky then continued, “Peter? You—”

“Know.” He pressed his foot on Mike’s. “I do. Really.” The way his expression turned wicked almost, almost prepared Mike— “Especially after this morning…”

Mike dropped his gaze, reliving the early hours. Him, waking up at the same time Peter did, and swinging over on top of him to kiss him as he took his first waking breath, Mike wanting to get in first, to initiate, their competition always ongoing.

Oh, the way Peter’s morning-sleepy eyes had opened cartoon-wide in maybe-mock-surprise, then softened in delight. They’d narrowed as Mike had untwisted Peter’s hands from around the back of his neck and placed them on the pillow either side of Peter’s head, ordering him to keep ’em there, with Peter trying to puzzle out Mike’s meaning. His _intention_.

Peter’s eyes gleamed in understanding a few seconds after that, but Mike wasn’t focussing on then at that point. No, he was sliding his hand down Peter’s body to his cock…that rose to meet his touch, and kissing Peter again, deeper this time, and massaging his cock gently, running his thumb across the slit to smear pre-cum over the head. Peter slept nude, even in winter, so there was no need to make him raise his hips for Mike to tug his sleepwear off.

“You taste so good,” Mike husked.

“Even first thing in the morning?” Peter rubbed his chin on the top of Mike’s head.

“Yes,” Mike answered, no jokes or pretense. “Kinda wanna go on kissing you, but…”

“But?” Peter’s wriggle said he knew.

Mike slid down Peter. “Something else I wanna taste.”

 _Something_ that was already slickening with pre-cum, begging for Mike’s lips…and his tongue, to lick at the slit, gathering the liquid on the tip of his tongue. He made sure Peter saw him relishing the taste, the feel, then took the head of his cock in his mouth, easing his tongue in a slow swirl around the ready flesh.

Mike knew Peter was eager by the way his hips arched forward and how his fingers—despite Mike’s order to leave his hands where Mike had placed them—speared into Mike’s hair. Mike held as still as he could, for Peter to get the message he should thrust, to fuck Mike’s mouth. When he did, his strokes were slow and rhythmic, long and smooth. _Not for long though_ , Mike vowed.

He slid his hands from Peter’s hips, half-turning his body at the same time so he could stroke his ass, matching Peter’s measured, leisurely strokes. Peter faltered a little when Mike slipped his fingers into his cleft, then stopped as Mike circled a knowing digit around his hole…and moaned when Mike pressed deep to find his sweet spot.

“ _Michael…_ ” he breathed, clenching down on Mike’s hand.

Peter came quick and easy first thing and first fuck, which delighted Mike, so Mike wasn’t surprised to see his head thrown back on the pillow, his torso raised in a beautiful arch as his orgasm overtook him. He started to pull back, but Mike held him captive in his mouth for him to come in effortless waves, as if pouring himself onto Mike’s tongue.

Mike made sure Peter watched him swallow—they both liked that and it made Peter shudder more, especially when Mike licked up the last drops he coaxed from him. Peter’s arms and legs came around Mike, to hold him in a fierce, tight, full-body embrace that Mike returned, for as long as Peter needed until he slackened and relaxed his grip.

“Yeah,” Mike breathed out now, half sigh, half agreement. “I sure hope you do.”

“Huh. Not like I didn’t return the favor,” Peter grumbled, bending close so his words were for Mike only. “You’re making it seem it was all you, that I didn’t obediently roll over for you.”

“That you did,” Mike agreed. “And moaned, sweeter than any music I’ve ever written, when—”

“You pushed inside me, filling me with one long, powerful thrust.”

“ _Babe!_ ” Mike yelped, any advantage he might have thought he had seized from him by his sugar with his angel face and gleaming-hot eyes and filthy, beautiful mouth.

“What? You did. And Michael, I don’t know if I’ve described, or if I ever could describe, that combined feeling of you deep inside me, hard and long, filling me completely, and at the same time nuzzling into my neck, so warm and sweet? Of course, there’s always the tiniest bite of your teeth, amid the warmth and sweetness, that nip that you could make sharper anytime. I like it—it keeps me in the here and now, attuned to what you’re doing…and what you’ll soon be doing.”

There was no doubt who any umpire would be awarding the point to. Mike reached inside his suede jacket and ran a finger around his shirt collar. “For someone who didn’t know if he could describe it, you sure managed fine,” he near-squeaked.

“What?” asked Micky, looking from one to the other.

“Nose ointment, tuppence a box,” Davy told him. “So keep it out. And were we supposed not to see you half-inch that napkin?”

“That…oh! I guess I took it without realizing…” Micky rarely felt shame. “I can’t read it now after you got Coke all over it, anyway.”

“Yeah, cleaning you up!” Davy protested. “And what were you gonna do, impersonate Mike?” He giggled. “While it _might_ work on the dog’n’bone, even if you did filch his jacket, or even his titfer, I can’t see that bird being fooled for long in person.”

“You’ve gone very British,” Micky commented. “Is it because there’s another Brit on the block?”

Mike was trying to decode Davy’s slang. Dog and bone was phone, he knew, but titfer?

“Hat. Tit for tat, hat.” Davy indicated Mike’s head, bare of a woolhat.

“Time’s getting on—we should get moving.” Micky wanted to go see all the Christmas displays.

“Look, there’s gotta be a simpler way to buy one another presents than the really complicated three-way-switch system we’ve been using up until now,” Mike mused. Even though they only brought each person one present, and that from Mr. Schneider, choosing it was bad enough, and going to purchase it didn’t have to be so layered, he felt.

“Not even trying to keep Micky from discovering what he’s getting?” Peter said. “That requires work.”

True, but… “How about this.” Mike took another paper napkin, ripped it into four and wrote a name on each piece. He felt in his pocket for his woolhat and dropped the pieces in. “Everyone take one. You get your own, drop it in again. That way, we only gotta go buy one present for the name we get, and no one knows who’s buying his, so he can’t tail him to see in advance what it is!”

Everyone looked at Micky, who looked around as if there was something or someone behind him. Mike got Peter, which pleased him. From Peter’s dancing dimple, he thought Peter got his name.

“Come on, Davy, let’s go!” Micky ordered, wrangling Davy to his feet, obviously having worked out that Davy had drawn his name. “See you at the car in two hours!” he called over one shoulder, bearing Davy away, Davy casting an agonized look back at them over _his_ shoulder as he was born away.

“So, going my way?” Peter looked along the boulevard toward the start of the Strip, making Mike narrow his eyes in suspicion. In his own way, Peter was as adept as Micky at finding out stuff. “I’ll give you a head start while I settle the bill with the forceful brunette in there.”

“The for _saken_ brunette,” Mike corrected, grinning, grinning more at Peter’s, “So long, Tex,” as he left.

Okay, so he had a couple hours before he had to rendezvous…less if he somehow bumped into Peter beforehand. The Mr. Schneider presents had all been chosen—finally—in committee, and, being communal, were paid for from a year-long savings jar, and Mike had secretly saved up some extra money to get Peter a secret extra present. He dodged around the drugstore door, not in a mood to have to take a sample strip from the demonstration guy with his Eau de Christmas cologne, or Frankincense & Myrrh aftershave, or whatever it was.

 _Oh._ It made him remember Peter all smart and dressed up in an evening suit, putting in a couple days’ work two Christmases ago at the Akron department store, spritzing a new cologne—Monsieur Debonaire, or Dapper or Dashing or something—with the idea being that a sexy blond guy would tempt women to buy the stuff for their man. Mike had swung by the store, just to see if everything was okay, and Peter had spritzed him. Just a little, a tiny splash on his neck, but enough to make Mike shiver in retrospect.

Because Mike was also remembering Micky, just a few months back, commenting on a white-coated foxy sales chick who’d sprayed Mike with a new cologne: “They spritz you, they dig you, man! Everyone knows that! And it means they want _you_ to spritz ’em back, if you get my meaning.”

Peter, two Decembers ago, had not only told him the aftershave smelled good on him, but had given him a tiny sample, a miniature glass vial with a plastic stopper cap. And Micky had said something else, that if the perfume assistants gave you a freebie, it meant they _really_ dug you.

The realization made Mike stand stock-still, in the middle of the meandering seasonal shopping crowd, oblivious to the _tsks_ and mutters and exaggerated walking around his stopped figure. _Oh. But…oh. Ohhhh._

Well, better late in figuring something out than never, Mike reasoned, his entire face curling up with the force of his smile. Maybe he’d dig out that little test tube of Monsieur Whatever from two years ago and see if Peter could put two and two together as well. _Wait. Unless… No… Ooh. The little—_

Mike’s smile deepened even more.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

Mike hesitated over losing his parking spot on Sunset to drive just a half mile down the Strip, but he wanted to be able to hide his purchases in the car after, so bit the bullet. Parking on Sunset and the Strip was _slightly_ easier in the day than the evening, and Mike was soon stationing the Monkeemobile and taking a deep breath before he went into the Très Bazaar.

The inhalation was necessary on the physical as well as the psychological levels. It didn’t do to take an incautious lungfull of whatever incense—or _whatever_ —was burning throughout the boutique that day, but was better to ease into it, taking shallow pants for a few seconds at least, and then a slow walk over to the counter that held the joss sticks and scented candles, the essential oils and dried herbs, to desensitize. Peter liked to buy incense here, and Mike could always tell when he’d paid the store a visit by the scents clinging to his clothes and hair.

That cautious adjustment applied to all the senses, Mike had discovered, starting with auditory. He was prepared for the tinkling of bells, activated by customers depressing the door handle and setting off the strings of silver and copper bells dangling from it. That sound was more of a chime today, with more bells having been added, and there was a louder jangle too, of another bell that’d been fastened to the top of the door frame. To give it a festive touch, maybe? In a quieter shop, the noise would get old quickly, but here it blended into whatever record was playing or whatever random instrument was being played.

“Zither,” Davy had betted it would be, when they’d come to check out possible Peter presents.

“Sitar,” Micky had wagered.

“Finger cymbals,” Mike had hazarded, and won for a change. Today it was a chick with an autoharp. Huh.

Actually, maybe the first and strongest slap was to the visual sense, right from the huge sign saying WAY OUT, the first thing customers saw, painted on the wall near the door. Should anyone think it was mere signage, an actual direction, the matching FAR OUT, pointing deeper into the store, clued them in, as did the colors and patterns all around, painted onto the walls and floor and stenciled onto the displays and counters, and not least the goods, the eye-catching clothes and hats, the shimmering floaty scarves and gleaming jewel-bright accessories.

“Hey, man!” Sage, the owner, beamed to see Mike. He welcomed everyone with the same warmth and greeting, in lieu of recalling customers’ names, Mike supposed.

“Hey. Cool shirt,” Mike replied. “Well, warm and sunny, actually.” He could see Peter in those sunburst colors. Wasn’t gonna buy him anything in them, though. He bent to pet a dog, doing so slowly to check it really was a curly-coated poodle-type actual dog hanging out near the curtains of the changing booths, and not someone on all fours with a fluffy rug over them, for some reason. No, definitely a dog, the small red and white Santa hat fastened with an elastic strap to its head matching the one Sage was wearing. The complementary headgear was more by luck than design, Mike would have betted.

There was usually a dog of some kind on the premises—the store was animal friendly, or fully integrated, as Sage put it. Mike recalled the Afghan hound that had been lying across the entire length of the couch when he’d come here to buy Peter his string of beads. He was glad Micky wasn’t with him. Micky would have been trading whatever he had on him—including the clothes off his back—for _this_ furry critter, if he’d been along for this leg of the present-buying expedition, then carried off the mutt, only to have some chick whose pet he’d taken shrieking after the now shirtless, shoeless Micky. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Talking of shrieking, or squealing… Mike peered over at the back room where the burst of noise had come from. He couldn’t see in, through the saloon doors, but there was a short line of chicks waiting to go in for whatever the space had been made into. The Bazaar was able to use it for something other than a storeroom now, having acquired some of the premises from the older store next to theirs. Whatever it was they were using it for seemed to be noisy.

“I’m gonna get a heart,” announced a waiting in line woman Mike half-recognized. She nodded, making her streaked-several-shades-of-blonde hair bounce. “Candy pink. Nice and bright.” As pink as the bubble she blew with her gum.

“Really?” The small redhead next to her frowned. “I’m kinda drawn to the lightning bolt.” She illustrated the zigzag shape with a finger. “Electric blue.”

“Really?” mocked a third woman, passing. Her scorn was directed at the blonde. “Thought you’d be getting an arrow. Pointing downward. In neon.”

“Go fuck yourself, Pammie. No one else wants to,” the blonde retorted, leaning her shoulders against the wall and bringing her hands to the small of her back.

Mike suddenly remembered who she was. Bliss, the groupie from the record studio, nominally with Peter’s friend, Stephen, and who’d been interested in Peter too, suggesting some ‘blond on blonde on blond action’, as Stephen had phrased it. Mike tried not to stare but the way she was standing made her dress cling to her…rounded stomach. _Wow._ Did that mean Stephen— A high-pitched gasp from inside the room had him spinning around.

“What you got going on in there?” he demanded of Sage. “I think you mentioned adding a hair salon to the store, but if that’s what you went with, you oughta fire that hairdresser, man!”

Sage laughed. “No, we _are_ gonna have a hairdresser’s, but that needs more space, so it’s only going ahead when we fully take over that old theater costume shop down the back.” He indicated in the direction of the side street.

“So y’all gotten a temporary tattoo parlor?” The girls had talked about getting pink hearts and blue lightning bolts, hadn’t they?

Sage shook his head. “Nah. You were closer the first time.” Mike must have looked bewildered, because he went on, “It’s a kind of hair dressing. Only, instead of haute coiffeur” — he patted his head — “think _bas_ coiffure. Lower down.” He dipped his gaze to Mike’s crotch. “Pubic art is where it’s at, man!

“It’s this month’s go-go boots!” enthused another assistant, dropping several necklaces around a headless dummy to display them.

“’Cept putting boots on don’t lead to _that_ noise.” Mike was sure of that.

“These chicks dig the bikini area waxing and tweezing, dude!” Sage assured him. “It’s part of it. Hey, Bliss!” he called out. “Need me to hold your hand?”

“Nah—hold the camera when I’m up on the table?” she called back. “I got the cine with me and want _everything_ captured…”

Okay, so maybe the shrieks…hadn’t been ones of pain, Mike supposed, but found he’d crossed his legs out of reflex.

“A lot of them do it to surprise their guys,” Sage confided. “Go out to a club in a minidress after, no panties, give him a flash, let him work it out…”

Je- _sus_. Mike couldn’t see himself spreading his legs and letting someone style and color his nether hair into _any_ kind of pattern for _his_ guy. In fact, anyone came near him with anything designed to rip his short and curlies out by the roots, _they’d_ be the ones yelling and a lot louder than these chicks were doing. He blinked away the water that’d come into his eyes at the mere thought of wax or tweezers being used _there_.

And if Peter wanted to surprise _him_ , he could damn well do it by locking Micky and Davy out for the evening and ordering a pizza and getting some beers in for just the two of them. _That_ was the kind of surprise from _his_ fellah that Mike was amenable to. Although…if Peter wanted to add a chick, possessor of pubic art or not, to the menu along with the ’za and beer…

This was really something they were going have to talk about, sooner rather than later, Mike recognized, shifting a little uncomfortably in his jeans and glaring at Bliss when, blowing a huge pink bubble, she trailed her knowing gaze down to his crotch, back up to his face, popped the bubble, and smirked.

Talking—or thinking—of Peter, the paisley shirts that he had liked were hanging on a rail and Mike made a quick choice of the blue-green pattern and snatched up a pair of white pants that would look groovy on his toned legs, paying and making a quick exit. Outside in the street, he recalled Sage’s words about the old theater costume store closing completely and went around the corner to have a look at it.

 _Theatrical costumier_ was the fancy way of saying it, according to the painted old-timey letters on the shop window. The window that displayed the goods inside, including…a rack of costumes. Animal costumes. All-in-one animal outfits, a little like the orange sleepsuit Peter already had, only _this_ one wasn’t orange but white and pink and with, well, furry ears and, _oh my_ , a fluffy bunny tail as Mike discovered when he was in the store and stroking the outfit. _Wait_. How in the _world_ had that happened?

“I…I…” he tried to explain to the stooped old man with his glasses on his forehead who was ringing up Mike’s purchase and folding it into a large flat box. “Heard you were selling up, huh?” was the best he could do.

The man scowled. “The store’s gonna be a hairdressing salon with coffeeshop. Just what Sunset needs, another gimmicky coffee house, right? Like we ain’t already got an art gallery that’s a coffeeshop. A bookshop that’s a coffeeshop. A chess and checkers place that’s a coffeeshop—”

“A coffeeshop that’s a coffeeshop,” Mike muttered. “Yeah, shame this place is closing.” Because where would Davy gets his sticks of greasepaint? Although, thinking about it, he did tend to use Max Factor these day, with the Leichner sticks he’d arrived from New York with being almost used up.

Bundling his purchase under his arm, Mike hightailed it, wincing at the image this conjured up…of the costume he was carrying…to the MonkeeMobile where he hid the Bazaar bag well and the costume _extremely_ well. They weren’t supposed to buy one another extra presents, and Mike was adhering to that agreement, because what he’d bought, the tight furry fluffiness that Peter, when he wore it, would make look so innocent and oh so _wicked_ …was more of a gift to himself…

Saint Anthony was the patron saint you prayed to to help you find lost things, Mike knew. At school, they’d chanted the quick version of the prayer to him, _Tony, Tony, look around. Something's lost and must be found!_ and visualized whatever book or keys or whatever they’d misplaced, for him to help them get it back again. But which saint did you pray to to keep things hidden? That would be a lot more useful to know at the moment, because if Davy or Micky came across that extra present Mike had brought… He broke out in a sweat at the mere thought.

He blamed his racing pulse and heated face and his almost frenzied considering of all possible hiding places inside and outside the pad—including neighbors’ houses—for almost making him miss the figure just ahead of him. He grinned. Like he’d ever miss her. “’Scuse me, ma’am, you lost? You looking for Crescent Heights?”

The woman, taller than average and lean-muscled, turned, the motion making the longer, more feathery locks of her choppy black hair wisp and float with her. Her hair had grown out a little since he’d last seen her a good few months back, as if she’d been too busy to cut it, and she shoved a thick tuft back from her big blue kohl-rimmed eyes, to see who’d spoken to her. He was glad that seeing it was him had her grinning, the small gap between her front teeth more visible in daylight than in the gloom of a bar.

“I do get out of the shop and workroom,” she informed him, running her gaze up and down him. She jerked her head toward the wall of the nearby store, out of the way of passers-by. “Nesmith. Get over here and turn around.”

“Shayne, I…” Mike started to protest, only to feel stupid when it was clear her attention was on his suede jacket. _Her_ jacket, in that she’d designed it and made it. He obediently twirled in a slow circle, for Shayne to study the hang of the fringing down the sleeves and across the front. “Yoke,” he corrected himself, grinning in turn.

“Weird—I wear this and see you,” he commented. “Like I sent a signal.” Wait. Did that sound like some kind of come-on? He hadn’t meant it to. “You look good.” _Damn._ That definitely did. “The earrings…” he added, vaguely. Whenever he’d seen her before, she had a mix-n-match row in one ear, but wore a line of silver stars now. “Very seasonal.”

“I framed that magazine picture.”

She didn’t go in for small talk, and it took him a second to understand what she was referring to. “Oh, with Grace!”

“Mel-o-die,” Shayne said, in a crazy lilt, making Mike laugh.

“Pity they didn’t go for her character wearing a Leafe design.” It had been worth a try, he’d thought. “But she looked good in this for the pictures, right?” Grace had been happy to borrow his jacket for the shoot, just as Amanda had been happy to write a feature about being an extra for a day on Hollywood Hills High and have her photographer take pics to go with it. Mike hoped Shayne had been just as happy about it. Skip, one of the show’s leads, had. Had gone off to Shayne’s boutique just above Sunset to get himself a jacket.

“It’s not exactly your ideal clientele or publicity, I know,” Mike said. “But—”

“But Danny was…interesting.” Shayne’s smile…looked familiar.

“Danny— Oh yeah. Skip’s the character, Danny’s the guy. And…” And there was no way to ask if ‘interesting’ meant Shayne …well, if Danny had, that is, if Shayne and Danny had… Mike squashed down any images trying to break loose of himself and Shayne. Specifically, him submitting to Shayne. Her dominating him. Him—

“Checking out the competition?” He indicated the store they were in front of. “I know, it’s leather and not suede, but…”

“Sort of. Going to check out the guy’s hide.” The way she rolled her eyes told Mike it was a trade joke. “Brave New World.” She shook her head at the name of the leather store.

“Least it don’t have a coffeeshop. Oh, nothing,” Mike said, opening the door for her and following her in.

Shayne ignored the goods on display and tipped her head onto one side to study him. To really examine him. “That photo I took of you in that jacket gets a lot of comments.”

Mike wouldn’t blush. He’d posed for her when he’d gone in to pay the final instalment of his item and presumed she’d display it. Heck, he’d agreed to it, had gotten a haircut and everything. He made a non-committal noise. But Shayne didn’t do polite talk. She talked about things for a reason. “And…”

“And I’d like to take another. Would you stop by sometime? I want to get a before and after.”

“Before and after what?” Mike was puzzled.

“I don’t know.” Shayne stepped nearer. “But there’s something different.”

The short, low rack of shirts they were standing in front of rattled and Mike looked up at the figure who’d come around it. “ _Peter?_ ”


	19. Chapter Nineteen

Peter was in _here_? Shopping? At least, he was holding a box with the store’s name on.

“Michael?” Peter looked from him to Shayne.

“This is Shayne. Peter.” Mike hadn’t realized he’d moved, but somehow he was by Peter’s side. “Peter’s in the band with me. He plays bass, guitar, keyboards, sings, writes music, arranges songs and…” He trailed off.

“Ahh!” Shayne looked from one to the other now, and gave a slow nod. “ _That’s_ what’s different. Told you.”

“Told—” Before he could ask her what she meant, he remembered her words, said when she was kicking him out the morning after. “ _You’re looking for a relationship. A connection.”_ His nod was just as slow as hers had been. “Yeah. Peter’s my one.”

He felt Peter’s start of surprise at his easy acknowledgment and to someone who was, after all, a stranger to Peter. “My other,” Mike added, repeating Shayne’s words again, standing as close to Peter as he could. As he usually did.

“Yeah,” she agreed, her full smile, unlike her complicit flash of a grin, pressing her lips together to make them into that plump little heart shape he remembered. “Yeah, he is. And always has been, for a good long while, I think? Good that you finally realized it. I guess it’s true what they say, that folks from the south do move slower!”

She tilted her head again, this time appraising Peter, and when she’d done examining him, brought up her hand to shake his. She clapped Mike on his shoulder and wandered away, both of them staring after her.

“Who…” Peter started to ask, but cut himself off with an, “ _Oh._ ” He waited until they were outside to continue. “Never mind…I think I know. I think you’ve told me about her, haven’t you?”

People said brown eyes weren’t as expressive as lighter-colored ones, as blue or green, say, but Mike was perfectly able to read the glint in Peter’s…and to answer it. “Yeah. I did. A couple times.” In vivid detail. Mainly at their joint counselling session…but also in bed, where Peter had first gasped, open-mouthed, at the story…then grown hard.

Mike eased Peter into a gap between two parked cars so they could talk out of the way of pedestrians. Whatever it was Peter had felt a twinge of earlier over that jingle-jangle-bracelet waitress had pinched at Mike too, and he wasn’t having Peter hurt in any way, however slight. He held Peter by the upper arm, just under the shoulder, realizing it was the same spot where Shayne had just slapped _him_. “And you know—”

“Yes, Michael.” _That I have nothing to worry about._ Mike could read that too. “I know,” Peter repeated, softly.

He’d confessed to Mike that he ‘Petered out’, not trusting and so overthinking and worrying away at situations until he made the aspect he feared manifest, almost. But he hadn’t, not over them, not for months. Instead, he basked in the white-hot love and passion between them, soaked in their gleaming-bright affection and devotion, letting them warm him through. As he always would, as long as Mike had breath in his body. As Mike did, too.

The twitch, dance and deepening of Peter’s dimple told Mike something was coming. “Although I might have more questions to ask you about it…later,” he murmured…and _licked his lips_. He goddamn ran the tip of his agile tongue over first the top then the bottom of his firm, well-shaped lips, his eyes on Mike’s, which were following the sinuous movement of Peter’s very pink tongue tip.

Mike’s Adam’s apple almost choked him as he gulped at how shiny Peter’s slow pass of his tongue had left his lips…and what _that_ put him in mind of, what other things that left Peter’s lips coated in a sheen and—

“Michael?” came Peter’s velvet-strong baritone. “Is everything all right?”

“You… You…” Mike looked away, stared unseeing into the Sunset Strip traffic and at its store fronts and business buildings to break the spell. He took a deep breath of traffic fumes and smog residue to clear his head, if not his lungs. “Ooh, you _little_ …”

He shook a finger at trying-not-to-smirk- _too_ -hard Peter. “Ask all you want. I got some questions myself, as it happens. Like what’cha got in that little ol’ box there, sugar?”

Peter eyed him. “You can pour on the southern all you want—I’m not telling.”

“Sure about that, pard’ner?” Mike asked, tipping a not-there hat. “I can be _mighty_ persuasive. Well, you know that.” He underscored his boast with a slap to Peter’s gorgeous ass as they stepped back onto the sidewalk.

“You’re smilin’ like a _loon_ , there,” Peter remarked, almost out-Texaning Mike.

He was, too. “Getting’ ma hand on your mighty fine ass makes me smile, babe,” he replied. No lie there, either, and Peter chuckled.

“The car’s just over there.” Mike jerked his chin. A store they were passing reminded him of what he’d been musing on earlier. “Say, I passed Schwab’s earlier and there was a guy demonstrating cologne—remember that aftershave you were demonstrating, couple years back? Began with D…”

“Dare,” Peter answered. ‘“Do _you_ Dare? Do you _Dare_?’ Why?”

“You gave me a sample.” They’d reached the Monkeemobile and Mike made sure he was the one to open the trunk and deposit the store box Peter had bought. It was heavier than he’d expected. He might have given it more of a shake if he wasn’t under Peter’s eye. “A little plastic bottle thing. Just wondered where it ended up.”

“I know where it is.”

“Right. Oh, and what’s in the big box?” Mike asked casually, closing the trunk.

“It’s y—” Peter caught himself. “Ha-ha.” He reached up to flick Mike’s ear. “You’re turning into Micky.”

“Anyone’s Micky, it’s you!” Mike rubbed his ear from where he’d failed to dodge in time, and poked Peter in the ribs in retaliation.

***

The _real_ Micky, back at the pad, declaring it was “Every Monkee for himself!” dived into the gold and silver gift-wrapping paper, sticky tape and ribbons, with Davy scooping up the remainder.

“’S’okay,” Peter said, before Mike could remonstrate with the pair, who were slinking off to presumably wrap each other’s present. “I made my own gift wrap.”

“You…certainly did,” Mike replied, catching a glimpse of the white sheet of paper Peter had turned festive by drawing the pad’s version of Father Christmas—Mr. Schneider—on. Peter had colored another piece of paper under that—Mike spied a lot of green, the same shade as his favorite woolhat. Had Peter made another sheet of wrapping paper? Why? Because he’d need it…for another present? _Hmm._ Maybe Mike wasn’t the only one who’d broken their one-Christmas-gift-apiece rules… And the thought of Peter getting him a special little something made his heart swell. He had to swallow hard to clear his throat to speak.

“You cooking?” he queried, when Peter made no move to hunt up more sticky tape or scissors, but headed for the kitchen.

“Uh-huh.” Peter butted the apron free of its hook with his head, nudging it on _over_ his head at the same time, then obeyed Mike’s _come-here_ gesture so Mike could do up the strings at Peter’s back for him…getting in a quick stroke of Peter’s ass as he did so. When that wasn’t enough to be going on with, Mike spun Peter around to face him, then walked him back a step…to stand under some handily placed mistletoe.

Relishing the look of surprise on his sugar’s face, he eased a leg between Peter’s and dipped him enough to position him perfectly for Mike to bend in an arch over him and steal a kiss. After an initial startled squawk, Peter kissed him back.

“Well!” Straightening, Peter touched his fingertips to his lips. “I’m making a Christmas treat and I got one too. Go sit. Over there.” He flapped a hand. “You distract me. Here…” He rootled in the icebox. “A beer.”

“Cheers, dear.” Mike completed the rhyme as Peter knocked the top of the small bottle and passed it over.

“Make it last. It’s the only one,” Peter warned him.

Micky had made their portable screen into a wraparound kiosk, cordoning him off like he was in a booth, and Mike thought he ought to at least take a look in the makeshift wrapping station, just to see what the kid was up to. He didn’t entirely trust him. As that thought crossed his mind, Micky’s curly head shot up indignantly from behind the screen and he threw Mike a dirty look. Mike gave him a wide-eyed _what?_ shrug in return.

“Peter’s cooking?” Micky asked, forgetting his indignation in the face of food. Even future food.

“Yes.” Peter pulled out a hessian sack. “Look what I got for a dime!”

“What is it, big Pete?” Micky asked.

“A bag of bruised apples! In fact, a big, bulging, bumper bag of bruised apples!” Peter replied.

That was so Peter that Mike wanted to lift his silky blond hair and whisper in his ear how much he loved him. Then bend him over the sturdiest chair at the table and—

“What’cha making?” Micky asked, side-eyeing Mike.

“Soup.”

There had been a time Mike would have yelped “Apple _soup_?” at that reply, but now he was happy for Peter to express his creativity in the kitchen. To extend his culinary prowess. To exercise his vegetarianism. And he got to enjoy the sight of Peter bending low to the freezer.

Peter emerged triumphant with a bag of frozen orange stuff. Pumpkin purée, Mike remembered. He’d been pressed into helping pulp it. “That’s for the soup too?”

“Uh-huh. I’m making one we always got at this time of year back home. I made some last December too. Now aren’t you happy I made you go around the neighborhood at Halloween, asking people for the leftover pumpkin middles they scooped out of their jack-o-lanterns?” Peter queried, pointing a stick of celery at Micky.

“…no,” replied Micky, after thinking about it. “Not really.”

“And I got these for almost nothing.” Peter held up a basket of misshapen potatoes and onions. “And I’ll make mash with caramelized onions. You like that.”

Mike nodded. He did. It was another local Connecticut dish, he knew.

“Ooh, to have with some of the meatballs left from the open house yesterday! I saw you hide ’em.” Micky, the Sherlock Holmes of food, had to get in on things. _Be in if he had to pay to get out_ , as they said back where Mike was from.

“Davy really likes that too.” Mike spoke quickly when Micky narrowed his eyes at him again. “Mashed spud.”

“Spud _s_ ,” Peter corrected. He turned to where Davy had stuck his head out of the downstairs bedroom on hearing his name. “You two help me peel them and I’ll make extra so—”

“Can’t.” Davy cut him off. “I’ve—”

“Got a date,” came in four voices, three of them attempting a mimicry.

“And so’ve you,” Davy reminded Micky, after sending them all a two-fingered gesture they’d long-ago learned didn’t indicate victory.

“Never mind, then.” Peter threw an onion into the air so it spun as it went up and down.

Micky tracked its ascent and descent, his hands literally making weighing motions, mirroring his dilemma of getting onion mash, if he helped now, versus smelling of root vegetables for a—

“Bird in the hand later,” Peter finished for him.

“You could always peel the apples?” Mike suggested. “You’d smell like a New England orchard in late September then.” Peter had told him once that the scent of just-ripe McIntosh apples as he and his brothers picked them conjured up fall in Connecticut for him, and that beautiful picture had stuck with Mike. He wondered if he’d ever see where Peter had grown up.

“Hey! And why aren’t you helping?” Micky asked, indignation lacing his tone as Mike took away his knife and exchanged it for a vegetable peeler.

“Because I can’t. Peter says I distract him.” Mike saluted them with his beer bottle, wandering away.

“Well, yeah, grabbing him, groping him and snogging the face off him would do that.” Davy, donning rubber gloves to protect his manicure and soft hands, took the small knife from Mike and started cutting the bad bits from the fruit.

Never one to stand when he could sit, he dropped into a chair at the head of the table, and Micky and Peter sat one on either side of him, meaning apples were soon rolling from Davy at the top of the table to Micky on the right for peeling, and then across to Peter for chopping, like half a zigzag.

 _What?_ Peter’s expression asked as he looked up, making Mike realize he must have been staring at the three bent heads and working hands, just as he was listening to the scraps of harmonies and lyrics they tossed back and forth. He shrugged. “Nothing.” _Just…you three. Us four. Monkees. Our family._ _That we made. That I…love._ The acknowledgment made his heart swell. God, he was getting sentimental.

“’S’that time of year.” Peter’s smile fit the season too—it was angelic.

“Talking of…” Hoping Peter was sufficiently distracted, Mike fetched in the gifts from the car, the boutique bag and costumier box hidden inside a series of bags containing the others, like half-assed Russian dolls, or lazy pass the parcel. If Peter had acquired X-ray visions, the layers of plastic and paper should block it, Mike reasoned, taking Micky’s place at the improvised wrapping station.

“Here!” Micky pulling apart the screen and thrusting his hands in when Mike had finished startled him. “I’ll take the gift for you!”

“No, Micky!” But he was speaking to the empty air—Micky had dashed to the present pile. “Mick, watch out! Don’t touch anything under the—”

“Tree,” Davy and Peter finished with Mike, but too late. Micky, using placing the gift as an excuse, had gotten in a surreptitious feel of the presents laid there and…had set off the Christmas-present-snooper trap, complete with its loud buzzer and flashing lights. He stood frozen, whimpering, covering his eyes with his hands, until Mike led him out.

“Well, that’s one of your best anti-tamper traps there, babe,” Mike acknowledged.

“Where d’you learn that anyway?” Micky asked Peter, the architect and builder of the spy trap.

“Oh, I was an eager scout.” Peter kneeled to activate the pressure pads or wire or whatever the hell it was.

“You mean an _Eagle_ Scout.” Micky rolled his eyes.

“No, I mean I was really into it!” Peter got to his feet and dusted off his hands. “As you can see.” He waved his hand at his work.

“What? Oh, come on! That’s never a merit badge!” Micky protested. “And ‘eagle’ scout—how many eagles have you scouted, huh?”

“Enough. Where d’you think that one came from?” Peter indicating the bird of prey on the wall had them all falling silent.

“Micky!” Mike suddenly exclaimed, working out why the loon’s chest suddenly looked thicker—it sure as heck wasn’t from muscles. “Don’t tell me you managed to snatch one of the gifts!”

“Just the one from Nyles.” Micky pulled the present from under his shirt and looked from one of them to the other. “Oh, come on! Nyles won’t know we opened it before Christmas! Nyles won’t even know when Christmas is! Let’s just see what game he got us. _Pleeeeaaassse?_ ”

“Oh, fine.” Mike was curious too. “Carefully, so we can slide it back in the paper again.”

He could understand why Micky—why they all—liked opening presents. It was like being a kid again as they all hung over the coffee table to undo the shiny red bow and see the cardboard box, the board game, emerging from the red and green Christmas-tree paper…


	20. Chapter Twenty

“Twister,” Micky read, pointing at the pictures of kids and a mat covered in rows of huge red, blue, yellow and green circles, displayed on the box lid.

‘“The Game That Ties You Up in Knots,”’ Davy read. “Oh, I saw this on the telly! Eva Gabor played it with Johnny Carson. He was all over her, man! Like, literally. She was on all fours and he was—”

Mike hadn’t seen the episode and didn’t really understand Davy’s mime. Didn’t think he wanted to.

“You put whatever hand or foot the spinner tells you on the colored circle it tells you. All the players. Male and female. All on this same mat, at the same time,” Davy explained, a dirty smile taking over his face and spreading to Micky’s.

“See, this is _exactly_ what we need for when we have chicks over for games evenings!” Micky petted the box.

“We don’t have chicks over for games evenings,” Peter replied.

“We will now!” Micky stuck his tongue out of one side of his mouth and rubbed his hands together. “Because I think Davy’s right, and they’re not even attempting to hide it! Just look what they call it right there on the box, ‘a strokin’ feet game’!”

“Mick, it says ‘stockin’ feet’!” Mike corrected. “You really are due an eye test, huh?”

“And that just means you take your shoes off,” Davy added. “Not that you have to put on stockings. Even if a person does have some stashed away…in a bottom drawer, say…”

Silence greeted that remark, Micky’s loud amongst it.

“Shouldn’t you two be getting ready?” Peter asked at last, his tone set to peacemaker.

“Yeah, go fight over who gets the bathroom.” Mike jerked his thumb toward it, backing Peter up.

“No need.” Micky recovered the power of speech and a smug light came into his eyes. “Not when I reserved it, on the calendar!”

With a growled, “ _What?_ ” Davy hurried to check, and turned back to Micky with the light of battle in his eyes. Which was when Micky got him in the forehead with a dart gun missile. And when Davy retaliated.

So yeah, Mike was glad when the pair of them, showered, changed, and primped, were hanging around the front door. Well, Micky was hanging around both the door and the stove, sniffing the soup cooking and making Peter swear to make his potato dish tomorrow, seeing as he’d decided not to today.

“I promise. It’ll be better fresher when all four of us can sit down to it,” Peter said. _And the den won’t smell of fried onions, when we have the place to ourselves for the evening_ , his glance at Mike said.

“Soup and bread’s fine with me,” Mike assured the chef. He glanced at Davy. “Nice of you to find Micky a date. And you’d better not be getting payment for it. Money, chores…anything.”

“More like Davy finally gave in,” Peter suggested, still smoothing troubled waters.

Yeah, true, Micky tended to pester Davy to take him along with him, but…

“More like I couldn’t get anyone else last minute,” Davy admitted.

“To…” He’d regret asking, Mike knew.

“Double up with me and Toby. We wanted to take her out, cheer her up.”

“We?”

“A new neighbor of Toby. Very new, very close neighbor of Toby,” Davy muttered.

Mike was about to press for more details when a car horn beeped outside and Davy grabbed Micky.

“Davy?” They heard Micky say as Davy hurried him out. “How much older is my date?

“Than what?” a Manchester accent replied.

“Than me,” floated in from the drive.

“Than you when?” came very faintly.

“It’s Minty, isn’t it.” Mike didn’t make his supposition over Micky’s date a question.

“Micky should count himself lucky. I bet the other choice was Toby’s brother .” Peter patted the table for Mike to come sit—he was serving the soup.

As always when alone with Peter, and especially this close to him, Mike felt incredible horny. He rubbed his foot against Peter’s ankle under the table, and when that wasn’t enough, stroked his knee. Damn. Only this week Peter had finally switched from shorts to jeans. Inching his toes under the hem of Peter’s pants was nice and all, but didn’t compare to stroking his fingers under the frayed cut-offs of his denim shorts, to tease the taut, warm skin of his knee and thigh.

Peter pressed his foot against Mike’s. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That we should check out that game?”

Mike cycled through _wut?_ and _hell, no!_ and _are you crazy?_ to land on a drawn-out, “Yeahhh?” because he could deny Peter nothing and they both knew it.

Before he could formulate anything else, Peter had leaped up, leaving Mike to deal with the dishes. Abandoning them in the sink, by the time he caught up with Peter, Peter had opened the box and was shaking out what looked like a plastic shower curtain onto the empty floor of the bandstand.

Mike studied the game, seeing as Peter was hell-set on it, taking in the mat, with its regular rows of colored dots, and the spinner, that dictated which colored dot you placed your right or left hand or foot on. It seemed easy enough. Peter was kinda competitive where games were concerned—Mike had wondered why, a few times before—and started trying this one out immediately. He wasn’t wearing socks, much less shoes, so didn’t need to slip them off to stretch himself out over the mat. He caught a foot, and tsked, then shook his hand out and tutted, then stood.

“I…don’t think this game is called Strip Twister, babe,” Mike said, when Peter pulled his shirt free of his pants, his actions and expression familiar to Mike.

“I caught my toes in my hem then, and look, my sleeve fell over my hand. This way should be easier,” Peter answered, one hand unbuttoning his shirt and the other unzipping his flies. “We’ll both need freedom of movement.”

“Except there.” Mike nodded down _there_ at what was held in place by Peter’s boxer-briefs. His rather tight navy-blue boxer briefs, which were identical to the pair Mike happened to be wearing. He frowned, thinking back to the morning. Had Peter donned them after his shower? Focussing on that, he wasn’t really aware he was copying Peter, divesting himself of pants and shirt—and socks, in his case—until Peter pointed at Mike’s crotch and grinned.

“They say couples become more alike as time goes on,” he commented. “Maybe the four ofus should have the, when we’re wearing the blue band shirts? Come on!”

“Hold up a little there, shotgun.” Mike was suddenly aware of where they were and how they were. He looked from the shower-curtain mat to Peter and himself.

“You chicken?” Peter knew how to push Mike’s buttons.

“Ch— What we playin’ for?” And Mike knew how to push ’em back.

“Anything,” Peter replied.

“Anything?” Mike couldn’t miss that gleam, the one that took Peter’s eyes from brown to topaz. “As in…”

“Winner gets to do _anything_ to the loser. Yes.”

“Or as we call it in the upstairs bedroom, Wednesday,” Mike muttered. “Fine. You’re on, shotgun.”

Within one move, it was obvious that the game, one that needed coordination and flexibility to keep the player’s elbows and knees off the ground, favored a yoga practitioner. And within two moves, it was obvious that a game requiring coordination and flexibility and absolutely no hang-ups about personal space favored a yoga practitioner named Peter.

“Hey!” griped Mike, when Peter half-stood and half-lay longways right in his face, balancing on one hand and one foot, the others in the air. Peter merely raised an eyebrow to go with his hoisted-aloft leg and arm.

Within three moves, it was obvious that Mike was distracted, and within four, that he was distracted by Peter. No, that Peter was distracting him. “Hey!” he yelped again as Peter threw a leg over him, into a green dot by Mike’s side. Threw a leg over his ass…slowly, and kept it there, slowly. Very slowly. “ _Peter!_ ”

“What?” Peter took a peek under Mike and must have seen what was tenting his briefs. Well, he could hardly miss it. “Oh. Well, not my fault you’re getting aroused!”

“It is _precisely_ your fault!” Mike hissed, his wrists shaking under him. “Guess you really wanna win this, huh? You are so dang competitive, boy!”

Another move had Peter’s arm across Mike too, meaning _he_ was across him. “Fancy…upping the stakes?” Peter murmured.

It didn’t need the nudge of his hips to tell Mike he wasn’t the only one who was already upping something. And why choose that word, stake? Mike felt as hard as a fence post as it was. And yet, he didn’t want to lose. A flick of the spinner had him seeing a way out—literally. Heaving and twisting, he managed to flip over as if rolling over in bed, and out from under Peter, to slap his hand down into the required red circle.

Okay, so spinning himself frontward and upward, like a kid pretending to be a bridge, exposed the massive bulge in his boxers. But having it sunny side up meant it wasn’t in danger of touching the mat, which, seeing as only hands and feet were supposed to, would probably disqualify him.

And of course Peter’s next move wiped the smirk of triumph from Mike’s face. Because flipping an arm over him _again_ meant Peter’s face was now in Mike’s crotch. “Peter!” cried Mike again, feeling as if he’d been yelping that all evening. “Pete— _ahhhh_.” The last syllable came out as a long groan, partly from the tickle of Peter’s silky hair at the tops of his thighs, partly from the scrape of Peter’s evening stubble on the insides of his thighs and partly from the nuzzle of Peter’s nose into Mike’s balls, all be they covered by the cotton of his briefs.

But, Mike had to admit, the moan he made next was mostly wrenched from him by Peter’s warm lips tracing his erect dick through the barrier of the navy-blue fabric, something that made it more arousing still, for some reason. “Don’t remember nothing about this in the rules,” he gasped out.

“It’s not. I don’t play by the rules,” Peter stopped mouthing him long enough to say.

He didn’t, thank God, and Mike didn’t know if he was paying a forfeit or winning a prize here. His legs wobbled and his wrists felt on fire, shaking from side to side under the pressure of holding that goddam stupid position, now with added Peter. And what Peter was doing to him… He’d done that before, eased or teased—Mike was beyond knowing—Mike’s waistband down enough for his dick to spring free. Only now, the tormenting little devil tugged it down just enough for the head of Mike’s cock to poke out, which it did, desperate for freedom…for Peter to take between his lips.

If it wasn’t wet already, Peter’s quick and dirty lick-and-suck soon had it sticky with precum and instead of taking it deeper, he rolled it along his lips. Before Mike could push himself any farther into Peter’s mouth, Peter pulled off and lifted his head enough for Mike to see his lips were not just glistening but slick and shiny…and that a salty drop was falling from the bottom one.

There was no verb or adjective to describe the noise Mike made as he collapsed, he didn’t think. It was kind of like an animal roaring in the jungle mixed with a tree falling in a forest. “You win,” he panted, admitting defeat as his body lay flat, no longer propped up according to the rules. “Although I think I’m the winner here…”

He made the thrust of his hips recall Peter to his duties, and the little devil made him wait by mouthing his way once more up the material covering Mike’s groin before yanking down his briefs and pouncing on his massively swollen cock like the jungle animal Mike had just compared himself to. Mike hissed as Peter tongued the head of his cock, lapping with long, showy licks at the liquid his tight, wet heat was calling forth. He let it coat his tongue then collect there in a little bubble, sticking out his tongue to make sure Mike saw it.

Mike did and groaned. “You’re so fucken _dirty_ , Pete.” Dirti _er_ , came his thought when Peter sucked harder…and noisier, the wet slurping and suction filthy. Mike’s clenched fist thumped on the floor at his side and Peter stopped. “What? _No!_ I wasn’t tapping out!” Mike almost howled.

He felt the giggle Peter huffed out as he dragged his tongue down Mike’s cock to his balls. This was a new form of torture Peter had started practicing recently and okay, Mike only had himself to blame because he’d done it first. _Not like this though!_ he protested silently when Peter took first one then the other into his mouth, rolling his tongue around it, sucking and licking and nibbling.

It might have been torment, but Mike found his legs were spreading apart to give Peter better access. He wanted to make some stupid crack about Peter not getting enough to eat earlier, by the look—and feel—of things, but doubted he could get his voice sounding nonchalant. Or at all.

When Peter looked up, his eyes were wide and shiny, as if with unshed tears, and his lips red and swollen and Mike almost came where he lay. Peter left that playground and brought his mouth back up the head of Mike’s dick, but didn’t suck this time. He rested his firmed lips there, telling Mike without words he should do some of the work.

So Mike did, pushing in and out of the perfect, tight wet heat of Peter’s mouth. He kept his strokes shallow, so Peter had room to use his tongue in that clever way of his, curling it around the head as Mike stroked in and out. Mike fought to keep his hands flat on the floorboards, not clench them into fists in case one banged down again.

Peter decided to add his hands into things, first just cupping Mike’s balls, letting him get used to that—as if he ever would—before squeezing and releasing them…in time with Mike’s thrusts. It made Mike shudder, and he couldn’t stop one hand coming up, to tighten in Peter’s silken hair. Pleasure streaked through him, a dozen charges of heat and electricity wanting to rush together, to power the release that was building. No, that was being stoked, by the perfect wet suction around his dick.

“Stop.” Now Mike did tap out, well, tap the top of Peter’s head. “Babe, stop, or I’m going to come all over that pretty face of yours.” He could pile on the filth too, and did so now, wanting Peter as needy as he was.

Peter stopped and moved off, leaving his hand curled around Mike’s throbbing dick. And oh, that slow pass of his tongue over his swollen lips… “That’s a bad thing?” he asked, his voice deeper and rougher from where Mike’s cock had been down his throat.

“No. I mean yeah.” Pulling himself together, Mike sat up. Carefully. “It is when I need to fuck you, right here and right now, yeah.”

He couldn’t see the dirty grin curling his own face, but saw its twin taking over Peter’s. Saw it and loved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers who have enjoyed this chapter, you have 70mtt to thank for giving me the entire premise for it and encouraging me to write it! So head on over to her fics and cheer her on too!


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just abject smut

“So…how d’you want me?” Peter asked, both his tone and grin that mix of dirty and flirty Mike adored.

“Naked for starters,” Mike replied.

“Naked for starkers? There’s no other way to _be_ starkers,” Peter deadpanned.

Mike gave him an eye roll in reply, tilting his head to watch Peter strip off his boxers. He kicked his own from his ankle then took a step or two back, to the picture windows. He didn’t know why he’d bothered standing up at all when all he did was sit again now, his back to the middle pane, the one with no bench up against it, unlike the ones to its right and left.

About to ask Peter what he was waiting for, Mike remembered and twisted to grope under the right-hand bench…for the small tube of lube they’d stashed there. Not like the others would think of looking there, or in any of their other lube-stash places. He ripped it free of the electrician tape that held it to the underside of the bench and skimmed it across to Peter.

“Get yourself ready,” he ordered.

Peter’s pout looked almost genuine as he protested, “Why is it that I won the game, and you’re telling me what to do?”

_Because this is what you want_ , Mike didn’t bother to say. Didn’t need to. He knew what his darlin’ needed, just as Peter knew he did. Now, the gorgeous, slutty sight of Peter prepping himself for Mike’s cock had Mike’s breath seizing in his lungs. He took a slow pull on his dick from base to head to get it under control.

“Hat,” Peter said, jerking his chin at Mike.

“Peter—”

_I won_ , Peter didn’t need to add. _And from fake pout to real brat_. Obediently, Mike stretched up to twitch the Stetson free of the hook in between the windows that held a bag of beach stuff…and served as a hat stand. Handling the crown and not the brim —he still winced when people settled western headgear on their heads or took it off by grasping the edge of the hat— he clapped it on his head. At least it made a change from all the red Santa hats and green elf hats and tinsel halos they’d all been sporting lately, he supposed.

The amber-bright glint in Peter’s eyes made Mike suspicious. “Please don’t say anything along the lines of how you love riding so much, you’re gonna ride a cowboy,” he begged.

“Fine, I won’t,” Peter promised, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like _giddy up_. “If you _say_ _it_.”

“Pe—” Mike gave in. He’d do anything for Peter and besides…he kinda liked this. He stared hard at Peter from half-hooded eyes and tipped his head back and slightly to the side, loving the reflexive shiver his sugar gave in response. Notching his chin, the angle set to arrogant, Mike patted his lap. “Come to Daddy,” he ordered, his words a husky command.

And if Peter readying his ass for Mike’s dick had been a sight to behold, Peter sauntering over to Mike, holding eye contact, his hips swaying was— “So fucken gorgeous,” Mike croaked, pulling Peter down astride him.

“Stop. You’ll give me a swollen head. Oh, too late.” Peter indicated his hard-on, a match for Mike’s.

Mike leaned his face to the side of Peter’s, nuzzling his mouth into his ear. “Do you have any idea how much I fuken love you?”

“As much as I love you too?” Peter whispered, nudging Mike’s head straight and looping his arms around his neck to start a long, lingering kiss, one Mike took over and deepened, stroking Peter’s tongue with his in that way that had Peter panting. He gasped more when Mike took his dick in one hand, treating it to a slow, hard stroke, and reached around him with the other. Mike spread his legs just enough to have Peter’s ass jutting out into the gap he made. It also eased his butt cheeks apart _just so_.

Peter broke the kiss, his breath sawing from him. He buried his head in the crook of Mike’s neck when Mike ran the tip of finger around Peter’s exposed, vulnerable hole. “Hey, steady there. I ain’t even touched you yet,” Mike observed. He ignored the ever-pounding throb of his own cock to work on Peter instead. After two more long root-to-top strokes, Mike made his fingers into a tight band ringing the base of Peter’s dick—he didn’t want him coming too soon. He still wanted Peter to fuck him, and thought Peter sensed that. But with a wriggle to bring him closer, Peter was defying Mike’s intention and rutting the head of his cock against Mike’s stomach, leaving a smear of precum on his skin…and earning himself a slap on the ass.

But Mike let him get away with it, let him play, while he ran his finger around Peter’s hole, testing his readiness. Peter had been generous with the lube, and enough remained at his entrance for Mike to circle the muscle easily, coat his finger and push inside, not stopping until he was rubbing over the sensitive gland inside Peter’s tight passage.

“Okay?” Mike muttered.

Peter nodded into his neck then raised his hips and wriggled his ass to take the full length of Mike’s finger inside him.

“Little faker,” Mike whispered. “All innocent and hesitant…and loving this.” He added a second as reward—he loved it too—pressing deep, tickling that bump that made Peter pant into Mike’s flesh, his open mouth wet and soft in the hollow of Mike’s neck.

“Wut?” he murmured to Peter, not catching the half-cry, half-moan but knowing it had been a word.

Peter raised his head to Mike, his eyes already a little blissed-out. “Another.”

“Greedy little boy.” His greedy little boy, who Mike adored. He complied—of course—spearing into Peter, twisting his hand and dragging his knuckles against his walls. Peter was humping his hand now, blatantly rubbing against him. “I’d bring you off like this if I didn’t need to fuck ya so bad,” Mike admitted, easing his hand from Peter.

“’S’okay. I need you to fuck me,” Peter confessed in turn, into Mike’s ear, his tone and action that perfect combination of innocence and raw demand, especially when he added, “Need your cock in me.”

“Patience, sugar.” Mike could be sadistic even when his rock-hard cock was making its own demands. He guided it between Peter’s thighs. He pushed slowly forward. “Thinkin’ we might need more lube—”

Peter’s answer to that was to move slightly so the broad head of Mike’s dick was right there at his waiting hole, then raise himself just as slightly, to then, quick as a flash… plunge down and take every inch of Mike’s pulsing dick inside his channel, moaning long and loud and lewd as he did so.

“Jesus, Peter!” Mike’s exclamation was almost as loud and his tone as desperate as Peter seated himself, getting himself well positioned. The sudden constriction and Peter’s movements— _contortions_ —almost had Mike coming. He’d wanted to savor this, to hold Peter under the arms to keep him still so Mike could push up into him oh so slowly, inch by inch. He’d planned on keeping him at the edge, wanting more, craving all of Mike until he bottomed out in Peter’s tight heat, that would be spasming and clamping down on him by then, desperate in its need.

But as always his darlin’ had caught him out. “Feel good there?” Mike husked.

Peter nodded, his eyes unfocused in the way smoking good grass usually had them looking. “So good.”

Despite his body urging him to move, to fuck, Mike managed a tiny head shake. “No—feels _fantastic_. You good and full?” He regretted the question the second he uttered it, in case Peter said—

“Good & Plen—”

He got a finger to Peter’s lips before he could riff on the name. Mike had to close his eyes against the memory of their visit to Candy Kisses in the Santa Monica mall, where Peter, on seeing the display of sugar-coated liquorice confectionary, had whispered that if dicks had the names of candies, Mike’s would be that one.

Mike had stumbled a little in reaction, He’d almost knocked the display of brown boxes with their pink and white capsules over. He’d just about gotten himself together when Peter had bent nearer to say, “I’m buying this one for you, Michael,” and lowered his gaze to make his meaning clear while holding up the large slab of…Big Hunk.

A crooked smile tilting his lips now, Mike stroked his hand the length of Peter’s dick, right over the head, where he coated his palm in the thickening fluid Peter was releasing. “Bit-O-Honey,” he murmured, continuing the game. Two could play…

Peter shifted, contracting around Mike’s engorged cock in his channel. “And _Chunky_ ,” he breathed. And one could win.

Yeah, Mike was harder and thicker than usual—Peter had gotten him revved with his teasing and by giving him great head and was now reaping the rewards. He arched his hips up a little more just to make Peter feel it as much as he did, and Peter’s groan was Mike’s reward.

His smile even more lopsided now, Mike nudged the hat from his head onto Peter’s. “Try to hang on,” he counseled. “Gonna be a wild ride…” He bucked his hips, driving himself deeper into Peter, and Peter sank farther down on Mike’s lap to take him all the way in. His open-mouthed panting sent his breath into Mike’s mouth and tasting the tart-sweetness of the soup and the sharper note of the shared beer felt intimate in a different way than fucking Peter did. He was suddenly conscious of them, alone, as one, in their corner of the pad, lit by the moon outside and the soft lamp to the side.

Alone, together, wrapped in each other’s arms, moving in a fast, rocking rhythm that wrung cries and moans from both of them. Mike couldn’t be that close to Peter’s lips and not claim them, not glide his tongue over Peter’s and dominate it. Their combined moans spurred Mike, impelling him to drive harder and deeper into Peter, who tightened his legs around Mike’s hips and met each thrust, matching Mike’s pace and force. As he always did. As no other partner ever had, making Mike want to weep at his good fortune in having met him…and wonder at how he’d made Peter his own.

“I’m close,” Peter admitted in a pant against Mike’s skin.

“I’m rightthere withyou,” Mike managed on a shaky breath, before stealing a final kiss. He gave higher, heavier arches of his hips into the clutch of Peter’s body, having to wrench his mouth away from Peter’s to cry out. Heat blasted the bottom of his spine, firing every nerve ending and streaking its way into his balls, turning his cry sharp and jagged as he came, releasing into Peter, and Peter was all he could feel when sheer, shocking pleasure melted his mind, his senses and the world around them.

Peter’s cry was an echo of his and when Mike’s brain started up again, he was selfishly glad he’d climaxed first so he could see Peter reaching his, see the look on his face, how his head was thrown back, losing the stupid, sexy hat, and his body spasming as his orgasm took him. Mike tightened his arms, holding Peter’s heaving torso to his as best he could while every nerve in his body was still sparking down to a sputter, and seconds later Peter’s shout was accompanied by the spread of wet warmth between their tightly pressed-together chests.

Mike lowered Peter onto his back, still joined to him, and helped him pump out the last pulses. When Peter’s legs fell slackly from their tight hold on Mike’s waist, Mike collapsed too, easing free to fall to Peter’s side, onto his one outflung arm. Mike kept an arm over him, as tight as he could, then nuzzled into Peter’s neck, inhaling the thickened scent of the skin between Peter’s neck and shoulder. Peter twitched and giggled, bringing his arm around Mike.

“Oh, man!” he murmured. “Sex with you is like fucking on acid.”

“I think that’s a compliment?” Mike replied, nuzzling deeper. Peter had suggested dropping acid a few times lately and Mike…wasn’t sure. Okay, so Peter had turned him on to dope, and that was groovy, but the way Micky wanted in on everything, when he and Peter were kinda responsible for the other two? Maybe someplace away from the others. Someday.

“We should go clean up,” he said, forcing his shaky legs to get him to his feet and reaching down for Peter.

Peter stood, carefully, and tipped his head to one side and assessed him. “Then go outside to the deck?”

“Yeaahhh?” Mike wasn’t too keen.

“What, it’s too cold for a southern…gentleman?” Peter teased and continued to coax as they washed up in the bathroom.

“Fine.” Mike looked around the den. “How about you straighten up in here and I’ll light the fire.”

In the sundeck’s firepit, which had gone out as the grill had gone in. They didn’t tend to do much outdoor cooking once fall had ended. And…it wasn’t really warm enough for relaxing out there now.

“No need to get dressed.” Peter must have been reading his mind and scooped their clothes up.

“I’ll need these!” Mike yelped and snatched his boxer-briefs.

“Don’t forget your hat, pard’ner.” Peter skimmed it across to Mike.

“That all I get to wear in winter? You gonna keep me warm?” Mike demanded.

Peter’s answer was a simple “Yes,” and it was already warming Mike as he strolled outside and positioned the screen to block off the steps down to the beach. It would also cut off any view of him and Peter from that side, just as the tree in front of them sheltered them front on. The firepit occupied the gap between the tree and the pad, and also acted as a barrier to prying eyes. Plus it was dark, and late, and there were no other houses _that_ close to theirs. Mike got the flames going.

“Oh, nice. And here…” Peter was carrying the heap of old blankets they used on the sundeck and beach, or camping, and Mike helped him arrange them on the decking, near the back wall.

“We’re lying down?” he queried. They wouldn’t be able to see out over the darkened sand or the nighttime ocean like that, just the stars in the night sky. “Not sitting?”

“Sittin’ by a firelight, coffee cups for two,” Peter murmured. He brought Mike’s hand to his face. “Touch my lips with your fingertips, do you know what you do?”

Oh. Mike loved that song Peter had been tinkering with on and off for months now. “You blow my mind,” he whispered, closing his eyes. When he opened them, Peter was smiling at him. “What?”

“If we lie down, we can’t see the waves, no. But I can fuck you.”

“Oh,” Mike said. Then, “Oh?”

“You—”

“Want you to, yes. More than.” A thing Mike was learning was to admit to his needs.

“Good,” said Peter, leaning forward into the flames to light the joint that appeared as if by Peter-magic, which was different to Micky-magic or even Monkee-magic, in his mouth. He inhaled and slid the joint free, then curled a hand around Mike’s neck to bring him close…and exhale into his mouth. “’S’gonna be long and slow.”

“Good,” Mike husked. Peter had torn the top offa Mike’s head long ago, and Mike loved that he had. He grinned. “Ready when you are, darlin’.”


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly finished, I promise!

“See? It’s not that cold.” Peter kept it as a statement and not a question as he sat, then lay on the blanket pile, still naked.

Mike followed him down, lying full length. He had a flashback to lying prone with the other two as well as Peter, their heads touching and their bodies stretched out into a four-pointed star, and shook his head to clear it. This was just him and Peter, on their backs, yes, but just the two of them, looking up at the deep blue-black of the sky and the glimmer of the stars. And side by side. Together. “This…” he tried to explain.

Peter propped himself on one elbow. “I know,” he whispered, bringing his other hand over and up for Mike to take a hit of the joint. He pulled a blanket over them. “Turn over.”

Mike did as ordered, onto his side, for Peter to be the big spoon, one whose hand came up again and this time stuck the last of the joint in his mouth. “Yeah, sure, leave me with the roach,” Mike muttered, taking his last inhale, and Peter slid down his body, burrowing under the blanket, leaving a kiss wherever his mouth touched.

Mike froze a little when Peter reached his ass and stopped…to ease his boxers over his hips and thighs. Peter used his agile feet to pull the boxers the rest of the way down Mike’s legs and off, the sensation of his toenails on Mike’s hair making him rumble his appreciation. A thought occurred. Peter really was clever with his feet and toes…so if Mike sat, say, against the headboard, and Peter sat opposite him, down the bed a little, like, maybe against the footboard, his legs toward Mike, could he perhaps—

“What?” Peter pressed close.

“Oh, just thinking. I love your hands on me.” It wasn’t a lie. A cover or misdirection, maybe, but not a lie.

“I like touching you.” Peter’s reply was interesting, but Mike didn’t bother squireling it away to worry at it, not when Peter smoothed a hand up Mike’s body from crotch to nipple, where he paused to rub, then stroke, before continuing up to pluck the joint Mike had forgotten he was holding from his fingers. A deep breath behind him told him Peter was inhaling the last whisper—he tended to—and butting it out.

Mike stretched, feeling so warm and mellow and slow and languid that he didn’t even flinch when Peter was back again, his leg nudging Mike’s top one over his body, so Peter could smear a cool, viscous gel around Mike’s exposed hole. It felt so dream-like, almost, in the quiet of the unseen-beach and invisible-ocean night, the color and crackle of the fire its only focal point.

His stretch became a writhe when Peter went from smoothing to stroking to teasing at the puckered entrance to his ass, and he gave a satisfied hum when Peter pushed his forefinger in, spreading the now warming lubricant.

“You seem tight,” Peter whispered in his ear, such a simple observation, but one that felt so goddam _suggestive_ and _filthy_ and _promising_.

Mike’s reply came out in a long hum, one that segued into a _yeassss_ when Peter stroked the gland inside that was waiting for him. Made for him. A long groan escaped Mike and he rolled his hips to take all of Peter’s nicely thick finger inside, giving a wriggle and a squirm to get it deep enough. It had been over a week—no, almost two—since he’d bottomed for Peter and he loved each time. Loved each time more than last. So that made this time the best yet, and it was only just starting.

He couldn’t have said how long Peter spent there, opening him up, stretching him, prepping him, but he sighed his appreciation and chuckled when Peter muttered, “Told ya was gonna be long and slow,” sounding more like Mike than Mike ever did.

Smiling, Mike nudged his ass back into Peter’s hardening dick. “And long’n’thick.”

Peter’s answering laugh vibrated through his chest to Mike’s back, pressed against it. Mike stilled when Peter eased his finger free and replaced it with the blunt, broad head of his cock, holding it at Mike’s opening like a promise before pushing forward, breaching him. It had Mike drawing in a deep breath, exhaling slowly as Peter pushed past his resistance. The moan that escaped Mike accompanied Peter’s sliding all the way in, and when Peter grazed his prostate, the jolt of pleasure this sent through Mike deepened his groan of response.

He couldn’t stop himself rolling over, onto his hands and knees, to arch away from then push back onto Peter, lengthening Peter’s thrust and turning it more solid.

“Hey,” came from behind him, Peter’s note of protest.

“Please.” Mike would beg Peter. No one else. “Just a’couple…”

Peter indulged him, quickening his pace, shoving hard into Mike’s tight heat. “Now who’s greedy,” he breathed.

“Me.” Mike would admit anything to Peter. “For you.” He couldn’t see or hear Peter’s reaction to that, but Peter allowed him a few more hard thrusts, then pulled him back down so they were both spooning, Peter still inside him. “I know. You’re in charge,” Mike said.

And he was fine with that, and with the almost _languid_ pace Peter set, and with how deep he stayed in Mike, how slowly he rode him and the easy strokes of his hand on Mike’s cock, keeping time with the movements of his hips. Mike was good with it because it all fitted, Peter, part of him, them, part of the night, with its stars and space, and the deck, with its flames and warmth. He doubted he could come again, and his arousal was more of a soft buzz than a sharp urge, something cloudy he want to wrap around him so he could feel it stroke and charge every hair of his body.

“An’ I got a lot of hair,” he murmured, hardly knowing he was speaking. But Peter was speaking too, then or a little or a lot later, his voice just behind Mike’s head, talking about how he could stay erect without coming, about limiting thrusting and yoga and the pubo-cock-something muscles—“Pubococcygeal,” Peter corrected, a smile in his voice—he was training.

And Peter’s voice was part of it, part of the warm, slow drifting Mike was doing with Peter, where he was half-conscious, or half-asleep, or both, or sleeping and waking, held and warmed and fucked. But they both must have come, softly, easily, while Mike was lost in the drift or the sleep of it all—his dick was sticky with spent cum again and Peter was still inside Mike, but soft and wet.

Peter had done that before, just as Mike had to Peter, come in him and fallen asleep cuddling after, without pulling out, but always before the climax had been such a big part of it, for both of them, some soul-wrench, not this easy almost-sleep and dreamlike euphoric state. It was… Pressing back from head to toe against Peter, he tried to put a name to it.

“Doing okay?” he thought Peter said, after that.

 _Fucking A_ , Mike told him, without words.

“A for amazing?”

Mike took his grin with him into the next tumble back into the cotton-wool drift of sleep and it could have minutes or hours but not days later when the thud of the door hitting the wall jolted him back to the wooden boards of the sundeck.

“What—” came a voice. Davy.

“Ho ho ho!” Micky’s footsteps came right up to them. “Say, Mikey, you nekkid under there?”

Yeah, the little monster would use Mike’s usual query against him. Mike fought the hold of sleep _and_ the hand lifting the blankets.

“Don’t bloody _check_!” shrieked Davy. “Jesus, you _perve_ , Mick!” The whump and exclamation suggested he’d hit Micky. “You should’ve let ’em cuddle and whatever.”

“Yeah, should,” Mike agreed, opening his eyes at last, mainly as he wanted to see Peter. “Whatever.”

“’Cause it puts Mike in a good mood all morning!” Davy continued, shoving Micky inside the pad.

Peter’s giggle was worth it all. Especially when Mike realized it was already tomorrow, and the day of Amanda’s engagement ball…

***

No, he was in a good mood when they got to the exclusive Beverly Hills hotel and made their tuxedo-wearing way into the ballroom. An amazed mood actually, he thought, taking in the guests, the princess-like women, whose bouffants were higher and gloves longer than even Bettina’s, and the men in full parade dress uniforms, their medals gleaming.

He kind of expected the latter to drop to their knees in front of the former and whip out small square proposal-ring boxes. Or maybe tasseled pillows holding glass slippers. No, the women would be in rags in that case, right?

He shook his head. He should have gotten more sleep. And brought sunglasses, what with all this fantastic silver and white décor with its touches of gold and its, well, _human_ decorations…

“I thought all the red and green and lights and snow _and_ the Father Christmas men at her at-home were one thing, but …” Peter rubbed his eyes.

“Isn’t it most _gloriously_ over-the-top?” Amanda, dashing into their midst, squealed in their ears. She spun in a slow circle in the enormous ballroom, pointing out the mirror-lined arcades, the high ceiling with its chandeliers and candelabras, the sculptures and vases standing on pillars. “Does anyone else think it’s modelled on the Mirror Gallery at Versailles?”

Mike, who’d been thinking the ballroom had a kind of funhouse hall of mirrors feel to it, tried not to feel guilty.

“ _Love_ how you’re all speechless!” Amanda crowed. “Yes, I’ve gone native in my theme for my engagement celebrations.”

“ _Native?_ ” Micky looked all around, perhaps expecting more Chickasaw.

“Los Angeles? City of Angels?” Amanda pointed upwards at where the people—trained performers, Mike hoped—were climbing and hanging from long golden and silver silken ropes…in short golden and silver silken robes…with wings on their backs.

Some were swinging and twirling among the chandeliers and some flying and spiraling from one rope to another, and the entire ballroom gasped as one when a group of three who’d been standing in the air with just one foot on a silver rope suddenly dropped several feet, then rolled themselves up in a golden rope, breaking their falls.

“Bloody hell!” Davy exclaimed. “I need a drink.”

“Finally, someone who speaks my language!” Minty trilled, popping up. She clapped her hands and a cherub boy with a halo, a headful of blond curls and a robe as short and wings as big as his angelic co-workers on high was suddenly there, holding a tray full of drinks.

“Are these for everyone?” Micky asked. “Or just—”

Mike stood on his foot before he could finish his question. “She hasn’t hired herself a portable drinks carrier,” he hissed. “Look round—all the waiters are like this.”

“What, choir boys?” Micky sounded confused. “Altar boys? I don’t get it.”

“Yeah, and you’d better not,” Davy muttered, warningly.

“It’s beautiful, Manda,” Mike told her hastily and honestly.

“Thank you.” Amanda took a delicate sip from a saucer of champagne. “Los Angeles…angels…arcadian. I’ve had that word, arcadian, in my head for some reason.”

The other three Monkees tried hard not to look at Micky.

“And when I saw this hotel, with its famous ballroom, both called Arcadian…”

If that little monster had been workin’ any of his mind hoodoo on Amanda, Mike would— He made a grab for Micky and pulled him out of range of an aerial acrobat dropping very low, so low as to suddenly appear in their group, lying horizontally in the air about head height with them. Micky squeaked like a guinea pig, more so as the man, smirking, helped himself to all the little cakes from Micky’s plate before spinning back up on high again.

“No, Harley wasn’t so keen, for some reason,” Amanda replied to a question from Davy. “But he should be happy now I’ve got my list down to twenty.”

“Wedding guests?” Peter asked in amazement.

“ _Bridesmaids_ ,” she corrected with an eye roll.

“ _Twenty?_ ” Mike asked in amazement.

“Well, yes.” Amanda stared around the group. “I have my girl chums, from childhood and school. I have family and ‘friends’ I’m obliged to ask. For which, thanks, Mummie. Then I have all my lovely new American friends, from Beechwood and magazine. Well, _Minx_ here in LA and the parent company in New York, of course. Oh and there’s Harley’s side of the family, of course. His daughter, Tessie—”

“Leslie,” corrected the blonde girl, Leslie Vandenberg, walking up and glaring at Davy.

“Leslie? Are you sure?” Amanda demanded. “Well, who’s Tessie then?”

“Is it me?” asked Toby, joining them. “Am I Tessie? If we have to have bridesmaids’ names, I mean? Because I think I suit Tessie. I think I can make it work for me.”

“Oh, I think Harley’s beckoning me,” Amanda said after a pause. “I’d better go and see—”

“Manda.” Mike turned her aside. “Is it okay with Micky? Are things okay with him here, I mean? General Vandenberg…” _Threatened to horsewhip him the length of Beechwood for not only posing as a woman and deceiving the general to the point of proposing to him, but for keeping and pawning the engagement ring said deceived general gave him._

“Yes, he goes all red and his face swells up whenever Micky’s name is mentioned.” Amanda breathed on her massive and new-looking diamond ring to polish it on her dress. “I suppose he’s angry at the way Micky treated me.”

Yeah, he had kinda messed her about with other chicks and sorta lied about it.

“He’s such a gentlemen. Lets me bitch about Micky for hours,” Amanda continued. “And so supportive—he joins in too. Yes, he loves hearing about how I got my revenge on him.”

Yeah, she had kinda gotten Micky to make a fool of himself at Disneyland. A few times.

“He’s had all the photos put into a special album.” Amanda smiled fondly. “Oh, and that one where Micky p—”

“I did not pee myself!” Micky yelled from across a small knot of guests, causing a stunned silence broken only by the, well, _tinkle_ of someone letting a glass slip through their shocked fingers to the floor.

“The one where his crotch is all covered in pee-smelling water after he got a fright?” Amanda continued. “Harley had it made into a huge life-sized poster for his games room. Uses it to throw darts at. I’ve flung a few at it myself. Can’t tell you where they landed…”

By the way Micky was clutching his crotch, she didn’t have to. “Well, thanks. Good to know,” Mike replied at last. Didn’t seem there’s be any Micky-trouble this evening, then. He whipped around and up at a commotion above his head.

“Peter?” Micky was tugging his sleeve. “You speak French right? Only these performers are Canadian and I can’t understand what that one’s yelling at me—”

“ _Arêtez de jeter des regards furtifs sous ma robe, petit pervers_ _!_ ” hissed the spinning angel, shaking a fist.

“Yeah, that,” Micky said, pointing upward.

“I’ll handle it, lads.” Davy stepped forward. “Mick, he said, ‘stop looking up my robe, you sodding pervert.’”

“Did he?” Mike asked Peter, in surprise.

“Yeah!” Peter gazed at Davy in astonishment. “I didn’t know you spoke such idiomatic French.”

“I don’t. I speak Micky.” Davy rolled his eyes.


End file.
